Rabbit Invasion

The Rabbit Invasion
Statistics
Type	Magical incident
Date(s)	2019
Location(s)	Cupid Homeworld
Actors
Actors	Faceless magician, Pessimist-242, Cupid Prime, Department of Problem-Solving, Lord Thymon, Aphrodite
Behind the scenes
First seen in	PROSE: Magic Trick
Also seen in	PROSE: The Cupid Parliament Destroyed? (mentioned) PROSE: Father Christmas (indirectly mentioned)

The “Rabbit Invasion” (PROSE: The Cupid Parliament Destroyed?) was a three-day-long incident when the Cupid Homeworld was overloaded with a swarm of magically-summoned rabbits due to a malfunctioning magician's hat. (PROSE: Magic Trick)

History

Beginning

On a day off from the Blue Feather, Pessimist-242 was wandering the Mainland Cloud, annoyed at his own inability to find something tangible to be annoyed about, when he stumbled upon a mysterious magician's hat. He briefly encountered its ostensible owner, a magician who appeared as a faceless phantom, which Pessimist attributed to him being a careless dimensional traveller who had phased nearly, but not completely, into the Cupid Homeworld by accident. He tried to hand the Hat back to the magician, but the magician pretended not to hear him and vanished. Trying to put the Hat out of his sight, Pessimist attempted to bury it, but instead activated its magic as it began to spew out a veritable tidal wave of illusory white rabbits. (PROSE: Magic Trick)

Evacuation of the Homeworld

The mounting mass of rabbits soon reached the Cupid Post Office and then the Cupid Parliament, becoming such an unstoppable force that the Cupids made for their Fog Ships and escaped en masse to the Euclidean Plane, where the Copper-Colored Council of Elders asked the Geometron Pentagon for asylum. The Cupid Prime, for his part, had escaped to Hawaii in his personal Fog Ship alongside his entourage, but not before telling the Department of Problem-Solving to stay behind and solve the problem. Lord Thymon used his powers to hold off the tide long enough for the Prime-Solvers, and Thymon himself, to take refuge in an empty warehouse. (PROSE: Magic Trick)

Resolution

After three days, having concluded that only a Deus Ex Machina could save the Homeworld, Valerius-1497 told the others that they should summon Aphrodite herself to help. The plan worked, but before she used her powers to make the rabbits and hat vanish, the goddess took out her anger at being summoned without permission on Valerius, turning him into a (mechanical) parakeet. The Problem-Solvers elected not to tempt fate by asking Aphrodite to reverse the transformation, content to add returning Valerius to his natural form to their list of problems to be solved. Juliet located a Psychic Broadcasting Cone in the headquarters of the Department of Communication and used it to summon the rest of the Cupids back to the Homeworld. (PROSE: Magic Trick)

Aftermath

In the following days, while the Department of Problem-Solving was sent to look for the Cupid Prime who had not returned to the Homeworld with the others, the Department of Haberdashery began to be inaccurately blamed for the Hat's existence by Colonel-028, with Lord Thymon coming to their defense. When Nostradamus-066 and the Department of Quasireligious Obsequiousness made a joint recommendation that great religious sacrifices should be organised to thank Aphrodite for her help, a snide Colonel even suggested sacrificing the Haberdashers. Amidst the confusion, the Department of Stage Magic fled to Florida, fearing that they'd come under suspicion next. There, they stumbled upon the vacationing Cupid Prime and returned him to the Homeworld, preemptively clearing their name in the process.

Subsequently, the Cupid Parliament were reluctant to resume regular sessions in the Cupid Parliament building. This proved fortunate, as this meant none of them were in the building when it was blown up by Conquest-932 in an ill-fated attempt at a coup. (PROSE: The Cupid Parliament Destroyed?)

“White bunny-rabbits” were later mentioned in Cupid Fact File #1225, written up around Christmas 2019, as one of a few “narrative parasites” which had succeeded in breaching the Cupid Homeworld's conceptual shields. (PROSE: Father Christmas)