Lucky Rabbit

Pandy had read more than a few isekai stories. Mostly free ones, found on websites where wanna-be authors posted their efforts and waited with bated breath for the reaction of the wild denizens of the internet. Some of them were excellent, but to be absolutely honest, most of them were…not.

And almost all of them, excellent or not, had one thing in common: the protagonist never told anyone even part of the truth. This meant they spent the entire story struggling alone, in spite of developing friendships or even romantic relationships. The hero or heroine always felt like they had good reason for their omission, and sometimes they did, but more often it seemed like a plot point, meant to make the main character more, well, main charactery.

Pandy had already decided she wasn’t going to make that mistake. But when the children and their pets gathered around beneath the tree next to Brook’s pond, early morning dew soaking their shoes and, at least in the case of Thaniel and Abbington, the seat of their pants, she looked around at their innocent little faces, and hesitated.

she thought.

Shifting Faces has already been used today. You have 00:36:40 remaining. Would you like to use it?

She winced. Only a little over half an hour. Where had the time gone? she told the System, and as she expanded back into the world, she also summoned clothing from her inventory, instinctively grasping at the heavy skirt, lifting it away from the mud and damp. This meant she was looking down as everyone really saw her for the first time, and she heard a chorus of gasps, along with a sigh that sounded like it came from Isidor. Pandy looked up in time to see Geraldine openly gaping. Eleanor restrained herself to a widening of her eyes. Abbington just tilted his head to the side and scratched his jaw. But it was actually the pets who had the greatest response.

Miss Cupcakes hissed in sheer, tail-flicking, slit-eyed annoyance, while Lord Winston moved between Pandy and the princess, the fur on his back rising as he growled in what looked like defensive confusion. Tempest poked her head out of Isidor’s pocket, and Pandy would have sworn that tiny arcs of electricity flickered around her head. Only Brook showed no sign of aggression, just walking out of the pond where she’d been lying in the shallow water, and coming to plop down on Abbington’s feet instead.

Eleanor looked at her dog with astonishment, then began to stammer an apology, which she cut off abruptly, as if unsure an apology was actually owed. Geraldine looked confused but ready to burst with excitement, and Abbington said, “S’notMsWellingt’n,” with absolute certainty.

Thaniel hopped up and pointed at Pandy. “This is Bunny!”

Everyone else looked at him, looked at Pandy, then just nodded. Why shouldn’t Bunny be able to transform into their former teacher? Hadn’t they just seen it with their own eyes? Children were truly wonderful.

Winston’s barking had died down to a low growl that rumbled in the back of his throat, making his jowls jiggle. Eleanor crouched down beside him, tucking her knee-length skirt up primly as she did so. Stroking the dog’s head with one hand, she looked from Thaniel to Pandy and said, “What is going on?”

“She’s an elemental,” Thaniel announced, though he seemed a little disappointed at his friends’ lack of reaction. Only Geraldine looked truly shocked. Miss Cupcakes just seemed disgusted, turning her back on them all with a flick of her tail. Everyone else exchanged glances, then nodded again.

“You…knew?” Thaniel asked, and everyone but Geraldine nodded again.

The dog had finally stopped growling, and Eleanor patted him on the head once more as she straightened. “We guessed,” she admitted. “It’s rare, but none of our animals ever acted like normal pets.” She smiled down at her droopy canine companion. “Winston appeared just after my sixth birthday. I was playing in the garden at-” She glanced at Abbington and Isidor. “Home. No animals should have been able to get in, but there he was. I didn’t even realize until my brother told me a few weeks later, and explained what an honor it was.”

An honor? Isidor hadn’t said anything about honor. But Abbington was nodding vigorously. “S’whyI’mhere,” he said, then made a visible effort to slow down. “No element’lists in th’ Valley, y’know? Not allowed. Just mages. Innate. But Brook picked me, an’ as long’s she’s here, I haveta learn.” Brook looked up at him and made her clicking-purring sound, so he scratched her rear, just above where her tail would have been if she had one, and the capybara slowly toppled over onto her side in a paroxysm of happiness.

Geraldine planted her hands on her hips and glared around at the others. “So Miss Cupcakes is an elemental? And you all knew?”

Thaniel waved his hands vigorously. “I only found out last night, when Isidor explained it to me. He’s-”

“It wasn’t my place to tell you,” Isidor cut the younger boy off.

“I thought you knew,” Eleanor said, eyes wide and slightly tearful. Abbington nodded his agreement.

“That’s why our pets were allowed to come here,” Geraldine said, turning her gaze from one ‘animal’ to the next, before stopping on Pandy. “Everyone knew. All the teachers. The other students?”

Hearing the embarrassed anger in her friend’s voice, Eleanor rushed to say, “Probably not the students. Not all of the teachers, either. It’s very rare for a high-tier elemental to come to a human just because it wants to, and it’s even more unusual for it to stay.”

The color drained from Geraldine’s face, making her freckles stand out. “Miss Cupcakes isn’t going to stay with me?” She collapsed beside her kitten, looking like her knees had simply given out beneath her. Unlike Eleanor, she didn’t even try to keep her skirts clean. Instead, she reached for the cat. For a moment, it seemed like Miss Cupcakes would turn away from the girl, maybe even rise and stalk off, but then she gave everyone else a dirty look before rubbing her jaw against Geraldine’s fingers.

“How long have you had her?” Isidor asked, as if Geraldine’s heart wasn’t breaking before his eyes.

“Six months,” Geraldine said. “I found her when I-” She stopped, eyes widening. “I burned myself.” She pushed back her sleeve, and Pandy saw a flat, reddish mark that was usually concealed beneath long sleeves, even on hot days. “There was a fire in the barn, and I knew one of the cats had just had kittens. I went in to save them.”

Her head came up, eyes pleading. “I knew exactly where they were! The fire wasn’t even that bad, and Mr. Dewitt was already there. He’s a Water mage! But the mama cat hid them in the straw, and it was burning up, so I just went to get them really fast. And Miss Cupcakes was the last one. I thought there were only four, but there was a fifth one, and when I went to grab her-” She rubbed her arm, eyes dark with remembered pain. The burn scar wasn’t large, but all burns were painful.

Miss Cupcakes placed a paw on the mark, looking almost apologetic until she realized everyone was watching, at which point she hissed softly, ears flattening as her tail began to twitch again. Geraldine ignored all the warning signs and stroked the kitten anyway, and somehow was not shredded for her audacity.

“I don’t think she’s going anywhere,” Isidor said, watching this interplay. “My Master says almost all elementals move on within a few days, possibly a week. There’s a theory that they like children because they don’t know how to control their magic yet. That magic seeps out into their environment, and the elementals are attracted to it, and may even feed on it in some way. But once the children begin to learn control-”

Everyone was staring at him now, and his cheeks flushed red. Raising his fist, he coughed into it, then said, “An elemental who remains beyond a few weeks will almost certainly stay for months, or even years. Some remain until their chosen human dies, though most will eventually leave for extended periods before returning to check on their person periodically.”

At this, Geraldine scooped up her kitten, who began the feline version of passive resistance, collapsing into a semi-liquid form that threatened to spill out of the girl’s grasp. Geraldine simply buried her face in the kitten’s gray fur and said, “Please don’t leave me, Miss Cupcakes. Not forever and ever.” Her voice held tears, and Miss Cupcakes’ fur shuddered at the contact with moisture. She didn’t attempt to escape, however, just glared at everyone watching as if daring them to comment on her humiliation.

Abbington and Eleanor were both hugging their own pets by now, and while Abbington was still holding himself together, Eleanor was in almost as bad a shape as Geraldine. Isidor wasn’t snuggling Tempest, who looked like she was about as pleased as Miss Cupcakes at the prospect, but Thaniel threw himself at Pandy.

It took her a moment to remember that she had arms, and then Pandy was hugging Thaniel and stroking his hair the way he petted her when she was Bunny. It seemed strange and awkward to speak now, the only adult among the children, but she said, “I’m going to stay with you. Don’t worry.” And she would, at least until he didn’t need her any more. She fully expected he’d outgrow her eventually, as children tended to do, but for right now, he was a little boy who had had his entire world turned upside down in little over a month, and she was the only thing he had to cling to.

And then they were all looking at Pandy, and it was her turn to talk, but she still didn’t know what to say. Was this the real reason all of those isekai heroes made such stupid choices? Was it just too hard to find a way to explain the truth? Because Pandy was sure that she couldn’t just out The Father for his necromancy-by-any-other-name. She certainly wasn’t going to tell Lian’s brother that Lian was the proto-villain in her favorite game, and that Thaniel himself was supposed to be dead.

“I…came from the future,” she said finally, and even Geraldine raised her fur-coated face to stare at her. Yes, well, that wasn’t very believable, was it? Even children would have a hard time-

“How far in the future?” Thaniel asked, eyes huge.

“Three, no, four…almost four years,” Pandy choked out, looking around to find that except for Isidor, the others looked just as astonished, but not particularly skeptical.

“Something bad happened,” Pandy said, thinking of the murders, followed by the attack of hundreds, or even thousands of demons. Honestly, the game had kind of skimmed over that part. It made sense at the time, since Gacha Love was an otome game with combat, not a combat game with romantic elements. Once Killian was defeated and ran away, Clara and her love interest went right on with school and dating until Clara found out her father was going to be deployed to fight the demons ravaging the rest of the country. Only then did the two of them run off, skipping over who-knew-how-much time and distance in a single cutscene, sweeping past blurry battlefields before dropping them into the final dungeon.

“A lot of people got hurt,” she went on, trying to skim as lightly as that cutscene. “So I was sent back to stop all of that from happening.”

Thaniel blinked. “So you came to me?” he asked, then stared down at his fingers, counting. “In four years, I’ll be ten. How can I help?” His eyes widened. “Is it like in Wayward Pirate Pete, when everyone under-ess-mates Pete ‘cause he’s a kid? Am I gonna sneak up behind the bad guy and-” His hand stabbed out, twisting a pretend sword.

Pandy winced. “No. I think there was a…an accident. When I arrived. I was supposed to, maybe,” no, she absolutely couldn’t tell Thaniel she was never even supposed to meet him, “start fixing things here, at school.”

“Who sent you back?” Isidor asked, dark eyes thoughtful as he stared at Pandy.

“What?”

“You said you were ‘sent back’,” Isidor repeated. “By whom?”

Whom? If Isidor wasn’t careful, even Geraldine would figure out he wasn’t actually six. Though Eleanor probably thought nothing of it. Pandy shook her head. Now was not the time to be impressed by grammar.

“Ismara!” Pandy blurted out. Ismara was the only god mentioned in Gacha Love, and though Pandy thought West Altheric had freedom of religion, she wasn’t absolutely certain, since everyone who  mentioned religion worshiped Ismara. Who better to blame this all on than a god? Besides, the important part wasn’t how or who – whom? – it was-

“What happened?” Thaniel asked. “Were there lots of battles? Do we need to sneak into a castle? Rescue a princess?” He glanced at Eleanor. “Does somebody get kidnapped?”

This was not going the way Pandy had imagined. She held up a hand, finally silencing the boy, but noticed that everyone else was leaning forward, fascinated. Everyone except for Isidor, who looked even more suspicious, if possible. Maybe she shouldn’t have picked a god, after all. A little mystery was fine, wasn’t it?

“Let me explain. In about three years…”