Two pairs of eyes, those of a young man and a world-weary rabbit, watched the ship accelerate and disappear into a red pulse of light that flared outwards as it warped away. A few seconds later, a small swarm of cats poured into one of their own portals, taking a shortcut through their shadowy tunnels between worlds. As they went, they were still arguing over which route to take, who exactly was going in the first place, whether Mittens was standing too close to Sieglinde and had anyone seen Unfluffykins? A much larger cat slinked off a lot more silently, although the fire giant sitting on his back was roaring a battle cry at the top of his voice as he brandished his blazing sword aloft. Meanwhile, one of the other Yamas, much older than and therefore senior in authority to Yan, stomped through the gates to Brokensphere, began yelling at the younger Minister, smacked him over the head with a stick and dragged him back inside by the collar. Before he left, the older bureaucrat glanced at Freya, gave her a look shared by all parents who were exasperated with their children, then slammed the door shut. The automata receded into their maintenance hatches with a wave from Lord Broken, the Celestial Minister in charge of the Department of Prototypes and Unused Areas. He looked around at Scribe, his apprentice, but saw that the boy looked busy talking to his strange new moon-rabbit mentor. The rabbit was also old, wise and teaching him useful skills, so the Celestial didn't mind, as long as the boy didn't become too overwhelmed and confused by his attention now being split between two jobs. With a yelled order to meet him back at the office before nightfall, he wandered back in to personally oversee a proper, full checkup on all systems affected by today's chaos.

Scribe and Bunfire carried on watching the world and taking notes.

"Our Muse has completely forgotten his new role again," noticed Bunfire.

The boy shrugged, "Look at how much creative energy he's putting out. He's going to do his job just by existing. He's a natural."

"He's a force of nature. Literally," corrected the rabbit, "Still, he's at least more honest than ourselves. Who are we kidding, that we can pretend to be impartial observers?"

"I'm not. These are our friends," said Scribe, "But right now, we help them better by staying out of their way and letting them do their thing."

"And backing up their data memory for them, because they're going to remember in this lifetime," added the rabbit, looking at a screen on his wristband and tutting to himself, "I thought Diggory would at least have learned that from living on a space station full of the most paranoid people about it in the Universe, but no, he's got to be special..."

"Hey, do you think it actually worked? You know, your plan..."

"I believe he fell for it at first, and it was enough to set things off, to get him going somewhere and doing something instead of trying to recover something that probably stopped existing billions of years ago. Now? I definitely think he suspects something by now. I know for a fact that he's spotted us watching him, and that he can tell it's more than just normal watching. He can probably put two and two together and work out that this situation isn't quite being left up to fate. Whether he can make the further logical leap that he's been played all along..."

"Are you sure it's not a mean thing to do? He just wanted to fix what was broken. There might really be a destiny waiting for him out there and you've just messed up his only chance to get back on track."

"If I thought there was any chance that it would happen and not be a complete disaster, wallpapering over cracks that grow to collapse the whole house around him, I wouldn't have taken the risk. However… this hasn't been a complete lie. Statistics like that couldn't be entirely fabricated. Diggory Doragor has a grand destiny somewhere in the deepest regions of the Multiverse and its universal overarching fate. Its scope is billions of years. But of course it would be stupid to expect him to wait for it like a princess in a glass coffin," said Bunfire, "Even if it hadn't been tried over and over again by virtually every faction in the Multiverse who wanted to own him and his fate like some of valuable antique, to absolutely no avail, you need billions of years of training and experience to deal with the sort of quests that happen billions of years into the future. And besides, just between you and me, the final battle is a court case and he still hasn't read the interplanetary law books I keep leaving on tables next to him."

"That's because they're boring. And that's by the standards of someone who won the 'most boring person award' in an academy for future bureaucrats," said Scribe, "Um… Bunfire… what would you have done if he agreed? To being put into stasis, I mean? He's a Paladin of Spatula and he's been taught to surrender as a reflex that's pretty much up there with eating or breathing, so..."

"Now that really was a risk that terrified me as I watched," said Bunfire, "But I trusted him. I trusted him to be at least capable of learning one lesson, to do something other than being led around by fate. I already saw the seed germinating in his mind and I trusted that his mind was fertile enough to grow the seed with what nourishment I could provide it. It appears to have paid off."

"Bunfire, could I ask one last question?" his apprentice looked up at him, "Why are you doing this? It's not really an experiment, or just for Diggory's sake, is it?"

The rabbit shook his head, allowing his long ears to flop from side to side.

"Sadly, it is not. When I looked for his fate, when I had to dig deep into archives not normally allowed to be seen by our eyes or those of any living beings, I… saw things I shouldn't. They were quickly sealed to me but I glanced at the wrong second and we Plotbunnies have almost eidetic memories. Scribe, have you ever gone lucid in a dream you shouldn't? Looked the wrong way in a dream that should have been scripted to point your head in the direction of what was happening and didn't bother drawing in the rest, so that you saw the bare foundations of a dream or, worse, the chaos that individual dreams are floating in?"

Scribe nodded, taking in a sharp breath as he remembered a fear so fundamental that it went beyond primal and fell into the realms of the information-self, the not-yet-compiled data memory, a fear as total as that of deletion.

"I'm worried that I broke something just by looking, Scribe," the bunny told him, his own short, fine, soft fur standing on end, "I think I observed something that should only have been able to observe me, broken the balance between the perceived and the perceiver. But, whether that's happened or not, it's too late now. It's been done and it's not my fault the safeguards weren't up properly… although it makes me worry who or what exactly is at fault… but anyway, I know one thing: the scheduled ending is, to put it mildly, not good."

"To Diggory's quest, you mean?"

"Yes, to Diggory's quest that is the quest of the entire Universe, for all space and time at once. Completion: the one thing that cannot be undone once it is done. Death holds no fear for Plotbunnies, you know, it's just another slightly annoying trip to the start of the cycle of fate. But the ending to one's quest..."

"So you want to teach Diggory to go against fate."

"Specifically, in a way that doesn't permanently screw up fate in a way that makes things even worse. And, before you ask me how I know how to do this in the first place, I don't. That's what makes it take so long."

"I was actually wondering if you would be in big trouble if your Director found out what you were doing."

"It's possible that every life form in the Multiverse looks upon me as a villain right now," said Bunfire, "But I'm not. Well, I'm not THE villain, anyway."

"Is that because it's Diggory?"

Bunfire's ears went straight up. He became silent. He looked at his apprentice for a very long time.

"Now that would be a spoiler," he said.

For the rest of the night. he refused to speak another word.