Lucky Rabbit

Time passed remarkably slowly when one was a rabbit waiting for dinner to start. Pandy spent the first part of the time putting together what might, possibly, look like a person sleeping beneath the blankets of a very lumpy bed, and after that she was kind of stuck. Anything else she did would take Corruption Points, and while it seemed like she had a good number, she already knew how quickly they could all vanish if she suddenly needed another skill or spell.

When the bell finally rang, Pandy was once again lying in the tube of her discarded nightgown, poking and prodding the stretchy black skin-suit. Was it some kind of super-villain outfit? Was it what Shadows wore when they were doing Shadow-things? Clara had only spoken to a masked man during a festival when she hired the Shadow Exchange, and the game never revealed who he was. All that really mattered was that the Exchange stopped helping Lian after they were paid off, and the end of the game was notably easier because of that fact.

The bell was muffled by the nightgown, mattress, and blankets, but Timon’s knock shortly thereafter was clear. The boy didn’t wait for Pandy to respond, just opened the door, presumably staring in at the lumpy bed. Pandy quickly cast Shifting Faces again, and in the meanest voice she could manage, barked, “Get out!” It was only slightly squeaky, so she considered it a win.

“Mistress Rose said-”

“Get out!” This time there was more authority behind her tone, as precious seconds ticked away on her spell. Why hadn’t she left herself more time? “In fact, I don’t want to see you before breakfast tomorrow.”

Timon hesitated, and Pandy could practically hear him weighing his options. Yes, his boss had told him to check on ‘Ms. Wellington’, but Ms. Wellington herself didn’t want him around. Surely that meant he could take off without repercussions. After all, if either woman got angry at him, he could simply say he was following the other one’s orders.

Pandy managed to shove a hand out of the bed, and waved it at him in what she hoped was a petulant, dismissive gesture. Finally, the boy took two steps into the room, paused only a moment longer, then set something down that made a loud wood-on-wood clunk. Two more steps, and the door closed again, allowing Pandy to lift the blanket just enough to see that she was alone once again, and there was a covered tray resting on the small table she’d bumped her head on.

With less than ten seconds left on her spell, she dismissed Shifting Faces once more, and exited through the little tunnel she’d just opened with her arm. She made a soft thump as she landed on the floor, immediately darting into the dark, surprisingly dusty space beneath the bed. This was one of the first places she’d investigated, so she knew it was empty, but deep enough that someone would have to crouch down and look in order to see her.

The door stayed closed, though, and Pandy eventually poked her nose out, sniffing the air, which was redolent with a warm, soothing scent that was somehow familiar. One hop took her up onto the chair, which wasn’t nearly as soft now that the cushions were supported by piles of coins, and from there she was able to press her rapidly-twitching nose to the crack between the wooden tray and its cover.

For all that she was certain Mistress Rose had intended to punish Ms. Wellington with the threat of whatever gruel actually was, it was equally obvious that Chef Farrier was entirely unable to make something disgusting. Pandy very much wished she had a little more time with hands so that she could lift that annoying lid and devour whatever was giving off that savory, herbaceous scent, but there was no way her bunny paws wouldn’t knock everything over and make a mess, and probably so much noise that even Timon wouldn’t be able to ignore it.

With a great deal of reluctance, Pandy hopped back down, crossing to the door, where she flattened herself on the ground, staring into the office through the crack beneath the door. The room was dark, which was promising, and neither her eyes nor her sharp ears could pick up any sign that the space was occupied. Still, she remained where she was, counting slow, useless breaths until she reached one hundred.

There was no doubt in her mind that she should wait. After everyone went to bed, the halls would be dark and empty. But Thaniel was waiting, and Pandy felt a gnawing worry in the pit of her stomach at the thought that he was alone. Well, not alone, since he was surrounded by dozens of other students, as well as several teachers, but she wasn’t there.

Pandy thought, and a moment later she was standing on two feet again. Quickly, she grabbed hold of the doorknob and turned it, sliding through into the darkened office beyond, where she immediately released the spell, with only three seconds remaining. She scurried to the desk, which was visible to her undead-rabbit eyes, even though her human eyes had only seen it as a dark blur among other dark blurs. Was that bunny-vision or undead-vision at work? Either way, she would have to keep in mind that dark spaces were best explored as a rabbit.

She very much wished she had time to investigate the office, but she would have to do it tomorrow, after Shifting Faces reset. Using it once more would also bring her to level two of the spell, and she had her paws crossed that she would gain at least a little more time with the level-up.

The gloom deepened when she kicked the bedroom door closed behind her, but that only brought the line of light beneath the door to the hall into sharp relief. She hopped over to it and repeated the process of lying-on-her-stomach-and-watching until she was almost certain no one was outside. It was still possible that Timon was snoozing in a chair just out of sight, or one of the other doors that lined the hall was open, but that was something to be dealt with when it happened.

Once more she sprang up into human shape, but this time her hand was barely on the doorknob before a notification filled her vision.

Shifting Faces expired.

Expired. Like a jug of milk past its Best By date. Except not like that, because expired milk had never left Pandy dangling from her paws as she desperately tried to hang on, much less turn the knob. How had Miss Cupcakes done it when the kitten broke into Thaniel’s room back on the Reedsley estate? Oh yes, that was a lever handle, unlike the round one that was slipping through Pandy’s paws.

Her back feet scrabbled against the wood of the door as she struggled to hang on. Her right rear paw caught on the doorframe, pushing her into swaying like a furry pendulum, and then there was a click as the door swung open just far enough to keep the latch from closing. Pandy pushed against the doorframe again, opening the gap wider, then dropped down to the ground with immense relief. She had done this once before, when going to the kitchen to make soup for Thaniel, but somehow it had been easier then. She hadn’t even really thought about it, but she was definitely thinking about it now.

Out in the hall, she was quickly reminded that it was much harder to use paws to pull a door shut than it had been to kick one closed, but she managed, then scampered off back toward the stairs. Not that she had any intention of taking those steps, however unlikely it was that someone would be using them during dinner. No, she had another way. Hopefully.

The little table near the infirmary held a vase and a bouquet of pretty flowers. This was potentially a bit more precarious than the heavy marble bust on the same table in Gacha Love, so Pandy carefully leaned against the table leg, rather than kicking it. At first, it seemed like this might be the moment when the parallels between game-Condor and real-Falconet broke down, but then the leg shifted. Pandy pushed harder, the leg moved again, and Pandy finally gave in and kicked it.

Contrary to her somewhat frustrated expectations, the whole table did not topple over, requiring her to make a mad dash for the stairs after all. Instead, the table leg bent at a neat angle, and the wall beneath the table slid aside, revealing a gap that was once again a scaled-down version of the one Clara used in Gacha Love. Honestly, even Thaniel would have struggled to fit into this space, but Pandy was able to slip right through.

Another kick closed the small swinging door, and Pandy was left in complete darkness. This time there wasn’t even a peephole to allow in a smidgen of filtered light, probably because this passage was used much closer to the end of the game, when the challenge level had increased, and Clara was expected to know the teacher’s schedules well enough to be sure no one was in the hall.

Pandy wasn’t the biggest fan of the dark, since things that jumped out of the darkness were very rarely good things for her. Though, to be fair, things that jumped out of the darkness probably weren’t good for most people, unless there was a birthday party involved. Still, after her short stint working at a pet store, where small dark spaces were too-often filled with escaped snakes and spiders, Pandy was particularly jumpy about the whole thing. She found some comfort in the knowledge that she was apparently immune to poison now, and made her way down the narrow, rickety stairs she could feel beneath her paws.

There were exactly sixteen steps before Pandy’s nose bumped into a wall with rather more vigor than she preferred, causing a single red point of LF to float off into the blackness. That was all right, though, because it also generated a small, quiet click, and then the wall bumped into her nose again, much more gently this time, as a line of light illuminated the edges of an opening.

Pandy pulled at the narrow edge of the opening, then peered through, seeing that she was exactly where she was supposed to be, beneath another table that matched the one on the floor above, except that this one held no flowers. Seeing that no one was there, Pandy scurried out into the space beneath the table, striking the bent leg of the table so it snapped back into place, closing the small door.

A moment later, the swinging doors at the end of the hall opened, and two men in gray uniforms came through, each pushing a rolling cart. Pandy darted out as the second cart rolled by, scurrying along beneath the wheeled contraption as the scent of sweet lemons surrounded her. The next door opened with a quiet squeak, the cart was pushed through, and then Pandy was in the dining room, just in time for dessert.

No one noticed her as she ran along in the wake of the dessert cart, ducking beneath chairs and between feet until she reached the door to the dining hall, where she escaped into the foyer. Fortunately, the door into the wing that held the student’s rooms was open, and Pandy was able to reach Thaniel’s room without being caught. There, she stared up at the doorknob and wished that she still had a few more seconds of Shifting Faces left. Still, she’d managed to get the door open before, and she could do it again.

Somehow, when she had to sneak out on her secret soup-based mission, Pandy had been able to hop up to the doorknob, swing to turn it, and escape out into the hallway in what had seemed like a single, fluid motion. Now, when anyone coming down the hall would find her dangling from the doorknob in a very rabbit-like fashion, Pandy absolutely couldn’t get the knob to turn. It took far too long to realize that even though this was ‘her’ room, it wasn’t keyed to her, and thus it was locked, at least from the outside.

This realization led to her sitting beneath yet another of the little, decorative tables that were scattered throughout the school. She waited, and waited, and wished that this world was a little more like Gacha Love, where she could skip the empty bits of time in between events. Eventually, however, a stream of boys began to flow past, entering the rooms all around her. The nine o’clock bell rang just as Isidor opened the door, and Pandy darted out, racing down the hall and through the open door, leaping up onto Thaniel’s familiar bed, where she came to a halt, meeting the gazes of two wide-eyed boys.