Lucky Rabbit

Pandy hopped faster than she had ever hopped before. Rabbits were built for speed, not stamina, but Pandy didn’t have to worry about running out of breath or having lactose acid build up in her muscles. Or was that lactic, and lactose was the stuff in milk? Whatever, she didn’t care about it. No, she just had to stay back far enough that the evil Fire mage-teacher didn’t notice she was back there. Because no matter what her intelligence score was, Pandy wasn’t an idiot, and she knew the crazy lady could probably just stomp her into crispy undead-bunny bits. Thus it was that she was close enough to hear the conversation Ms. Wellington was having with herself. In two different voices. One of which was far too deep to have emerged from a human throat.

“I told you this was a bad idea.” That sounded like a slightly breathless Ms. Wellington.

“Need boy,” came the other voice, also distinctly emerging from the woman’s throat, but sounding rather like a post-op Louis Armstrong with a whole pond of frogs stuck in his throat.

“We should have waited,” Ms. Wellington insisted. “I could have found a way to get him without anyone knowing. Hell, I could have convinced him he wanted to go with me.”

“Boy now,” the other voice said. “Go back.”

The woman snorted, though it was cut off as she gasped for air. “You paid me to turn the girl, not risk my life. Now that you know the boy is a…Dark mage…you can…get him yourself.” She slowed, then stopped, leaning forward and clutching her side. She turned and looked at the path behind her, gaze passing right over Pandy, who was frozen in the shadow of a fallen tree.

“That should be good enough,” she muttered. “And don’t worry. Yes, they’ll be on their guard now, but we can sneak in another Shadow in a month or so. We won’t even charge you too much extra, even though this is your fault.”

Pandy’s brain locked up as tightly as her muscles. Oh. No otome game was complete without a hidden organization that gathered secrets and performed unsavory tasks. Sometimes they helped the heroine, and sometimes they were an adversary. More rarely, they were both, and it was into this third category that the Shadow Exchange fell.

The first part of Gacha Love was a fairly typical game, with Clara meeting the four boys, getting to know her school, and beginning to level up. After the mid-winter dance, however, everything changed. By then, the player was supposed to have selected a primary love interest, and their Affection stat pushed the rest of the story.

No matter what path the player took, the Shadow Exchange helped Killian find and trap his victims. In both Edgar and Prince Kaden’s paths, however, they were able to buy off the Exchange. The representative of the Exchange never said who their original employer was, but they stopped accepting assignments from Killian and even helped Clara protect the remaining targets, which reduced the number of deaths. Neither Dorian nor Bastian had the money or influence to do the same, so in their routes, more people died unless Clara herself managed to earn enough money to pay off the Exchange, which was next to impossible unless the player paid real money for extra gacha spins.

Pandy hadn’t realized that the Shadow Exchange were already involved so early in the story. She thought Killian had brought them in, but here they were, already causing trouble, and there was no way Lian had hired them to abduct his little brother. So who had hired them, and why were they after Thaniel? Was it Thaniel in particular, or any Dark mage who hadn’t yet received any training?

That thought sent her mind spinning in a new direction. Killian had had a whole cadre of other Dark mages at his beck and call. The vast majority of them were young and angry, just like him, but where had they come from? In the game, no one had ever really questioned it. Killian was the Bad Guy, and he had minions. What kind of villain didn’t have minions? But now, living it all out for real, Pandy realized that didn’t make sense.

Dark mages were hidden, either by their families or of their own volition. They were shameful. There was only a single token one at Condor, there mainly so Clara could be kind to him when everyone else picked on him. Eventually, he provided a key piece of information that led to the realization that Killian’s Light magic had been corrupted into Dark. So where had the dozen or more young Dark mages who followed Killian come from, if he hadn’t been able to recruit them himself?

There was something else going on here. Something in the background that Gacha Love had never addressed. A hidden villain? Another, even more secret organization? Had Killian himself been just another piece to be moved in a game within the game?

Pandy didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all. She wanted to dash forward and do what Clara did in the game – offer the woman in front of her a ridiculous sum of money to divulge all the secrets. But she couldn’t. Because she was a rabbit. And also because Ms. Wellington was about to die.

The woman was still walking forward, arguing with the other voice living in her throat, and she seemed to have completely forgotten that she was in the Rupert Nature Preserve, home of many kinds of protected animals and plants, some of which were actually quite dangerous if one wasn’t careful. And Ms. Wellington’s one – or possibly two – definitely wasn’t being careful.

When her first foot got stuck, she just glared down at the root she’d stepped on and tugged it free. The second foot required that she bend down and grasp the ankle, pulling even as her skirt touched and clung to another woody tendril. Even then she could have escaped, simply by removing her shoes and cutting away some fabric. Rather than doing so, however, she pulled harder, grunting, “These…are…my…favorite…shoes!”

At that point, three things happened. First, Ms. Wellington’s finger sparked, summoning a bit of fire, presumably to burn away the wood. Second, the root to which the pointy shoe was stuck began to sink into the ground, along with the ones holding her skirt. Third, Pandy ran forward.

She didn’t like Ms. Wellington. At all. In fact, Pandy thought the woman was rather horrible. Still, she didn’t want to see someone be eaten, which was what was about to happen. The probably-not-actually-a teacher had managed to find one of the last stands of an endangered plant called the Tarroot. The thing was aptly named, since it waited for insects and animals to get caught on the glue-like surface of its roots. At that point, if the plant wasn’t particularly hungry, it waited for its victim to starve or dehydrate, then ingested the corpse. If it had been a while since it ate, however, it was known to take a more…active role in the death.

Both Edgar and Bastian brought Clara to see this plant. Edgar because he was fascinated by unusual – and sometimes macabre – things, and Bastian because Tarroot was supposed to be quite tasty in something like a carrot cake. In fact, in the Gacha Love cookbook, caramelized carrots were substituted for Tarroot in one of the recipes.

Either this Tarroot was upset that its meal had tried to burn it, or it had been a long time since it captured something large enough to sate its hunger. Either way, roots were writhing in the ground around Ms. Wellington, who began to shriek in what Pandy considered a delayed reaction. The dark, raspy voice also began to bellow, but in anger, not fear.

As Pandy reached Ms. Wellington, the woman was already lying on her back, one leg sunk into the ground up to the knee, while the other had dark tendrils wrapped around it. Another root flailed in the air, and Pandy skidded around it, instead latching her teeth into the puffed fabric at the shoulder of Ms. Wellington’s dress. With all her Strength, Pandy tugged, but her only reward was the sound of tearing fabric and a first-degree burn on her lip. The woman’s skin was blazingly hot!

-2 LF 

Pandy bounced backwards again as fire began to flicker on the surface of Ms. Wellington’s skin, crisping her clothes until they burned away in small flares and ash. Unfortunately, this only left more of her skin exposed to the Tarroot, and, also unfortunately, tar and fire produced burning, sticky tar. While the not-a-teacher seemed to be immune to her own flames, she wasn’t immune to more natural flames that rose as a result of her efforts.

Pandy backed up some more, not at all sure what to do. In a moment of sheer desperation, she summoned the dirty water and bowl out of her inventory, then turned and kicked them toward the flaming figure. The small amount of water remaining in the bowl had very little effect, so instead she pictured the pan of Bastian’s Cozy Cure, and kicked that toward the flames as well. She’d had plans for that soup, but she could probably make more. Eventually.

The Cozy Cure had much more of an effect than the disgusting water had, actually succeeding in putting out the flames on one flailing hand. Pandy saw her opportunity and ran forward again, dodging fire and Tarroot to sink her teeth into the flesh of Ms. Wellington’s palm. There was no fabric left to grab, but this time she was careful not to bite down too hard.

+10 Corruption Points for Drinking the Blood of a Mage

+10 Corruption Points for Drinking the Blood of a Mage

+10 Corruption Points for Drinking the Blood of a Mage

The roots convulsed, and Ms. Wellington sank deeper into the mass of flaming dirt and sticky, wooden tendrils. The forest grew suddenly quiet as her screams cut off, and Pandy was hauled forward and down by the hand still in her mouth.

As she saw it, she had only two options left. One, let go. In that moment, even knowing that there was little she could do, and that the person she was trying to save was, if not evil, definitely not good, Pandy just couldn’t force her jaws to open. That really only left option two.

At least as a human, she would have hands to grasp and pull the other woman back out of the ground. She was still moving, if feebly. It wasn’t too late.

¥se One ƕndrᴥd fifty-§ix (1⁵6) Ɔⱺrruption Points to cast ƺhıƒƮɨɴρ ϝÅϿξᴤ?

She had enough. She was sure she had enough. Her body began to shift, twisting in a very uncomfortable, though not painful – for once – way, and new words appeared before her eyes.

Select one person to copy. You must be touching that person in order to use this skill.

Well, that was clear enough, and Pandy just happened to be touching someone. Not someone she had any interest in copying, but a human being, with opposable thumbs and everything. What was Ms. Wellington’s first name, though? Did she even need it?

Casting of Shifting Faces successful. 100% experience gained towards next level.

Shifting Faces is now level 1.

Dull human teeth slipped from Ms. Wellington’s flesh, and Pandy’s paws shifted, becoming hands. Scrambling, she used those hands to grab onto the other woman’s wrist, pulling with every bit of her improved Strength, even as she felt something hot and horribly sticky slither around her own ankle. It tugged, and her foot sank into the ground. Pandy couldn’t help it. She shrieked.

“Bunny!”

That frightened young voice was enough to yank Pandy out of her own fear. Releasing Ms. Wellington’s wrist, she pulled against the root that grasped her, tearing herself free, though she left a strip of skin behind. Stumbling backward, Pandy felt her bare behind land on a clump of grass that went places no grass had a right to go. But the root was gone, and Ms. Wellington was gone, and Pandy flopped backward, shivering only slightly at the cool touch of still more grass and rocks against her bare skin.

Only to find herself gazing up at a small, pale face. “Thaniel,” she breathed.

“Bunny?” Thaniel said, tears beginning to fall from his eyes.

As the warm droplets touched her skin, Pandy reached up and hugged him.