Chapter 3: Collapse

From a distance, the towers of the White City gleamed in the high desert sun. Their glass and steel frames created an aberration in the horizon that was utterly alien to Paradox, who had scarcely left his shack in his life.
Paradox had, at length, decided to heed the elder bunny's advice. It hadn't been an easy decision, though. The message was, by the bunny's own admission, cryptic at best. He had left no name, no reason for his message, and no way for Paradox to ask more questions after the geezer left. The message's non-specificity was compounded upon by the fact the the content of the message required Paradox to march into a den of creatures that would presumably try to kill him if they knew of his existence, or at least his powers'.
Of course, Paradox had never witnessed first hand what creatures did to the dark folk, but his mother had told him, long ago, of the war that had torn their people too shreds. She had told him how every one of his people had been hunted down and killed by their enemy, the light folk; but that had been many, many years ago. Maybe they had forgotten about his people? Maybe they had mellowed in the past few decades? Paradox couldn't be sure either way.
There were two things that kept Paradox from forgetting the whole incident with the older bunny and going back to his garden. The first was that the old fogey had somewhat implied, at least in Paradox's view, that he was the servant of the Great Spirit or someone like him, and you don't just say 'no' to the Great Spirit. The second and more important thing was the alleged fact that somebody needed his help. He hadn't heard so specifically but Paradox couldn't help but feel that lives hung in the balance of his decision. It was for the few people that he may be able to help that Paradox had fought through his misgivings about the creatures that inhabited the white city. His mother would surely understand that.
So Paradox walked on toward the mysterious towers that continued to grow on the horizon until Paradox thought they were so big they must have been built by giants or gods; not tiny creatures like him. Paradox was so enthralled by the wonders slowly rising above him that he didn't notice the guards at the city gates until he was scarcely a stone's throw away.
Paradox stopped. Those were people. Other people with gleaming armor and rifles that could fire plasma at him and kill him, if they wanted to. Paradox gulped in a big breath of air. If he wanted to help these people, he had to meet them sooner or later. Paradox resumed walking.
When Paradox was about ten feet from the guards, one of them, a brown bunny, spoke. "What's your buisness, then?"
Paradox stopped. He searched for the right words.
"In the desert, sir. What's your buisness out here?"
Paradox took another deep breath. "I'm going into the city-"
"Yes I know you're going back into the city sir." the guard said. "I need to know why you were out."
"Why I was... What?" Paradox said. He was a bit confused.
"Look, sir, let's not make this difficult. You left the city on some buisness. Now I need to know what you were doing so I can fill out the paperwork."
"I- I didn't... Leave." Paradox stammered.
The guard rolled his eyes. "Look. Obviously you left, Bub, or you wouldn't be coming back. Why. Did. You. Leave."
At this point, Paradox kind of knew the answer, but the guard was asking the wrong question, and it flustered him to no end. "Uh, I didn't, that is I-"
"Okay, fine. If you wanna make it difficult, that's fine by me." Said the guard. "But you ain't getting into the city until I can file some paperwork, alright?"
"Fine! Alright!" Paradox said. "I'll stay out here awhile!" and he did a one-eighty and marched away, much to the surprise of the guards. Maybe Paradox could deal with creatures trying to shoot him, stab him, or burn him at the stake; he wasn't sure, but maybe he could; but what he could not deal with was an uncooperative conversationalist. Paradox had no idea how to talk to these people. He wandered away, but inevitably his conscience drew him back towards the city walls. Paradox couldn't just abandon the people who might need his help just because he was rubbish at small talk.
Paradox found himself staring up at the top of the wall. The gate where he had seen the guards was somewhere off to Paradox's right, out of sight around the curve of the gigantic circular wall. Paradox lifted a foot to walk back to the gate, but stopped. He could go back, but then he'd just be stuck in the same situation he was before. Paradox looked up at the wall again. Its didn't look too high. it was what? forty? fifty feet tall? Paradox walked up to the wall and closed his eyes. Concentrating on the ground beneath him, Paradox channeled his power around himself. Then, with a flick of his paws, Paradox caused a brilliant green explosion that shot him like a bullet up to the top of the wall. Paradox barely managed to grab the metallic battlements with his paws and pull himself over. Lucky for him guards were scarce, and he was able to slip down the other side of the wall unnoticed.
Thank goodness. Paradox hadn't been worried so much about what the guards might do or find out as much as he was worried about trying to worm his way through that same mind-freezingly awkward conversation again. Now he didn't have to.
Paradox navigated through rows and rows of squash growing on arched racks before he approached the cloud-scraping buildings that comprised the majority of the white city. Paradox stopped to prepare himself to enter into the public areas of the city. There would be no turning back once everyone saw him, but maybe it was better to get things over with so Paradox could stop questioning everything he was doing.
Paradox walked forward.
Paradox emerged from the alleyway formed by the walls of two warehouses. As he did, he jumped at the appearance of a brown mouse, who pushed past him without acknowledging him. Paradox stood there, stunned by the fact that one of the people who allegedly wanted his blood has brushed past without noticing. While he was frozen, more creatures filed past; slightly annoyed at the dark-furred creature who was obstructing their path. One of them said "Move it, loony" with a peculiar accent and Paradox immediately plastered himself against the nearest wall, trying to be as small as possible. This drew a bit of attention from the nearby pedestrians, but they soon looked back to their own business. Wheeled vehicles and hovercarriages sped past, heedless of anyone.
They don't care about me? Paradox thought as he studied the nonchalant expressions of passing creatures. They don't care because they don't know. Paradox allowed himself a breath that he hadn't realized he was holding. He took a few bracing gulps before un-gluing himself from the concrete.
Paradox wasn't sure what to do now. The cloaked bunny had told him that the White City needed his help, but details were scant on where in the city Paradox needed to be. Maybe Paradox could just sit on this corner until the trouble came to him, but what if the trouble happened on the other side of the city and he couldn't get there in time? That and Paradox didn't like the looks people were starting to give him. Maybe if Paradox just started walking he would blend in more and he could find the trouble, whatever it was, before it became a big problem. So Paradox began walking along the street in no particular direction.
Two things soon made themselves abundantly clear to Paradox. The first was the sheer scale of the city he was in. Paradox had been so preoccupied with the size of the individual buildings that he hadn't taken time to note that there were hundreds of them, each containing hundreds of people who all had somewhere to be. The second thing Paradox realized was that, precisely because the city was so big, his chances of simply happening upon the thing he needed to fix when he needed to fix it was next to zero. Then again, if the cloaked bunny was a servant of the Great Spirit like Paradox suspected, One chance in a hundred-thousand was enough.
Paradox was just worried that he wouldn't get the chance to find whatever he was looking for before someone recognized him for what he was. One thing Paradox noticed about the inhabitants of the city was that they all had fur that was brown, white, or gray; nobody had fur that could be construed as black, let alone the pitch void that Paradox was carrying around with him. Someone, sooner or later, was bound to notice he wasn't like the rest of the people here and ask themselves why; Or maybe they'd just mention it in passing to someone who knew why. In any case, Paradox promised himself he would get out of this place as soon as possible.
Boom.
At first, Paradox wasn't sure he had heard it. The city was a loud place with a lot of unfamiliar noises. Maybe this was just another part of it. However one look at the nearby citizens told paradox that whatever had just sounded was not an ordinary occurrence. Many people were stopping to look around. They very clearly shared one thought with Paradox; What just happened?
Then a building exploded.
Fifty feet in front of Paradox and two stories up, an array of reflective windows shattered and flew in all directions, creating beautiful, deadly patterns of stained glass for a split-second before it collided with the street below and shattered into tiny, pearly snow. Several pedestrians were injured on the downpour, and Paradox had begun running toward them when he was halted by a metallic, bone-chilling voice booming over the chaos.
"Hehehehaah! Greetings fleshlings! How's your day been?"
A bolt of energy arced through the air and scattered asphalt where it hit. Then several vehicles spontaneously lifted off of the ground like they had just been filled with helium; pitching at odd angles and bumping into story-high windows. More lightning followed, striking targets seemingly at random. it wasn't until the assorted floating junk began falling back toward earth with a vengeance that Paradox was able to make out the source of the chaos.
The lightning bolts were originating from a shrouded, pulsating black sphere that was floating fifty feet above the street. Tendrils of blackness licked the air around it, like a fire caught in a black hole. Upon closer inspection, Paradox was able to make out a face; Two white slit-eyes without pupils complimented by a jack o' lantern's cackling grin. The mouth and eyes were both glowing with white light and they seemed almost two dimensional, like instead of a real face, this thing only had the painting of one slapped on top of it.
Pedestrians ran screaming, and the grin of the thing lengthened.
"What? You're running away already? I haven't even had the chance to introduce myself! Say hello to QUANTUM COLLAPSE!"
The last two words were punctuated by a floating vehicle seemingly throwing itself at the mob of fleeing people. Paradox didn't have time to think; he reached out with both his paws and his mind and grabbed the gigantic projectile from fifty feet away, enveloping it in a green light that slowed it to a stop in midair. Paradox's eyes began glowing brighter. He almost instinctively shut them so nobody would see.
Several pedestrians stopped to look back in confusion at the sudden halt. The black thing probably would have noticed too if it hadn't been distracted by a nearby enforcement officer who was firing bolts of plasma at it from a rifle. This seemed to be a mistake on the officer's part because the tiny bolts of flame seemed to have no effect other than to catch the thing's attention.
"Ah! we have a player!" The orb said as it turned it's attention onto the lone officer.
Several more vehicles, as well as few large chunks of loose asphalt and a few clusters of glass daggers, rose from the ground around the guard. At this point, the officer realised that he was in way over his head and opted for a tactical retreat. He started running off to the left along the sidewalk, but the flaming wreck of a hover carriage impacting in front of him was enough to dissuade him. A few shards of glass pelted his armor and nearly blinded him to a slab of asphalt that convinced him to change direction yet again. giving up on escape, the officer elected to take cover behind a parked vehicle. Soon after he did, however, his cover floated up above him, revealing the painted face on the other side.
"Thanks for playing, stiff." The thing said as assorted debris assembled around it like a firing squad. There was nowhere left to hide.
Luckily, at that moment a rouge vehicle enveloped in green light smashed into the side of the thing's face, crumpling and shattering into scrap.
Paradox was already lifting another weapon off the ground when the orb looked toward him. His eyes were glowing brighter now, and green fire poured upwards out of them.
"Oh ho ho!" The thing cackled with delight. "I was wondering when things would get good!"
Paradox threw another vehicle. It sailed on a trajectory that would take it straight into the blob-thing's painted face, but stopped in midair, inches from the thing's mocking eyes. Then it reversed course, flying straight at Paradox. Paradox, surprised by the sudden twist, barely dodged out of the way of the careening chunk of chrome.
When paradox looked back, Chunks of debris were rising everywhere around the thing. Girders from nearby buildings were ripped out of place, causing them to sag worryingly. Cracks spontaneously appeared in the sidewalk and chunks of concrete were ripped free to join the ensemble. Scrap metal, now torn into jagged shapes, oriented themselves like spears towards Paradox's heart.
Oh crap, Paradox thought.
Paradox dodged to the left as a concrete boulder hurtled after him. He skidded to stop his momentum as a guillotine of scrap embedded itself into the ground in front of him. As he accelerated again, Paradox deflected several shards of glass with his powers, and then he threw a large square of metal at the thing like a Frisbee. The projectile seemed uncooperative, however, as it curved around it's smug target like a boomerang and honed in on Paradox instead. Paradox dodged it narrowly; he was sure it had shave some fur off of his back; and looked back toward his foe just in time to see a hover carriage hurtling straight toward him. Paradox was able to use his power to turn the impact into a graze instead of a full-on collision, but a graze was all it took to send him spinning across the rough pavement with a sharp pain in his right forearm.
Paradox landed prone, face down into the pavement. He immediately tried to push himself up, but his right arm protested with a sharp pain. Hopefully it was just a sprain.
"Hehehee!" Said the metallic voice. "I haven't had this much fun since my rampage in the black forest!"
Paradox rolled over and shot his good paw out towards the thing. Maybe he could defend himself long enough to...
Paradox didn't have time to finish the thought. A bolt of lightning struck inches in front of him, sending him flying again. Paradox landed on the pavement a few feet away, aggravating his bad arm even more.
Then, with his ear to the ground, Paradox heard rumbling. At first he thought it might be the result of a concussion, but the black blob apparently heard it too, because it turned it's attention backwards. On the far end of the street, past the disaster zone that had formerly been their battlefield, a troop of armored officers was picking their way though the rubble followed by a pair of white, gleaming enforcement tanks. A couple of the officers pointed at the blob and increased their speed.
Paradox considered making a run for it while the thing was distracted, but it soon looked back to Paradox and the moment was over.
"Oh you are one lucky bunny." The metallic voice said. "We'll have to finish this another time. I, for one, will be looking forward to it. Catch ya later!"
And with that, the thing spiraled into the sky like a deflated balloon.