Lucky Rabbit

Pandy started out with the best of intentions. She crept closer to the building as slowly and silently as she could, regretting the loss of Ms. Wellington’s Sneaky-Suit. She kept her ears up, her whiskers out, and her eyes constantly moving as she listened and watched for any sign of spiders or humans.

But then she remembered that she was still ‘paying’ to hold Augustus’s venom at bay, and absolutely had to check her stats to see if her Mana was draining away at some precipitous rate now that she’d gotten so far away from him. She checked, finding that it was holding steady at five hundred and six – she really had cast a lot of Minor Heals – but otherwise there was nothing to let her know if the cost really was tied to distance, or if something else was going on.

That meant she had to keep watching, because she was sure her natural recovery rate was more than the point one per second she was spending on Innate Magic, which meant her Mana should go up. If it went down, then the amount she was spending on the spell must have gone up. Unless it was the other way around?

These mental mathematics meant she was too distracted to hear the sound of boots thudding on the floor inside the building, so she almost got smacked by the door when it swung open abruptly, and a man stepped outside. Some instinct – probably rabbit in nature, rather than demonic – made her pause just before she reached the yellow light cast by the window just ahead of her, and the leading edge of the door swung past her nose.

Pandy threw herself backwards, scrambling to find purchase on the worn stones, but the man who stormed outside was obviously even more distracted than she had been, because he didn’t even notice. He did, however, slam the door shut with a bang that was loud enough to wake the dead. Or the undead.

Pandy dismissed her status, deciding to be satisfied with the fact that her numbers weren’t going down, even if they weren’t going up, either. She was looking between the small-house-sized building and the retreating back of the angry man, trying to figure out if she should follow him, when the door opened again, much more gently this time.

“C’mon, Jess,” said the second man in Hankin’s voice. “It’s just a game. Come back in before the spiders get you. I dunno how I’d explain that to Gin.”

Jess spun around, a deep scowl curling his lips. “He’s a damned cheater, and you know it, Hankin. This happens every time. We do a job, he talks us into a game, and we lose everything we just made. I don’t know why I keep fallin’ for it!”

Hankin hurried out, closing the door just as carefully as he’d opened it. Crossing to Jess, he whispered, “One of us has’ta win eventually. He’s just lucky!”

Jess shook his head, then rubbed his temples, scowl fading to a baffled frown. “Yeah, maybe. It’s just… Ginny told me if it happened again, she’d walk. She deserves better, Hankin!”

Hankin – a burly man of average height with unusually close-set eyes – shrugged. “I s’pose so. I mean, she’s a good sister an’ all. I tell you what,” he leaned closer, “you an’ I, we’ll play together. Whichever one of us wins, we’ll split the pot. Even if the boss wins, the other guys’ll lose, and we’ll get out once we’re ahead.”

His brother-in-law – equally burly, but half a head taller and with a squint – sighed and waved a hand absently, as if shooing away a fly that Pandy was quite certain wasn’t there. This place was as empty of insects as it was small, furry mammals other than herself. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. You’re a fool, Hankin, but this time you’re right.”

Hankin looked offended, but only a little. Pandy had the distinct feeling he was used to being insulted. “‘Course I am. Now c’mon. Just apologize, and we’ll deal you back in. You can’t quit while you’re losing, or you’ll miss it when your luck turns.”

That didn’t make sense to Pandy, who was well aware that luck rarely – if ever – actually turned so conveniently. She watched as the two men returned to the house, Jess still looking mildly confused, and Hankin grinning, with an arm stretched up across the taller man’s shoulders. For an instant, she wondered if she should try to scamper inside, but she hesitated just a bit too long, and the door clicked shut.

A soft whistle reached her just as she started to hop forward again, hoping to find some small gap in the wall she could slip through. She turned, and saw a shadowy arm beckon her back. With a backward glance at the house, she returned to Augustus.

He was tucked into a tiny space between a fallen wall and the remains of what had probably been a lamp post. She didn’t even see him, but as soon as she got close enough, he reached out and snagged her, murmuring softly into her ear. “I’ve seen this before. The boss has to be a pheromone wielder,” he said. “Unless you’re somehow immune to it, you’ll be influenced, too.”

Pandy tilted her head. Pheromone wielder? That definitely wasn’t one of the elemental types Pandy had learned about in Gacha Love. She knew what pheromones were, at least in a general way, but how did someone ‘wield’ them?

Seeing her confusion, Augustus went on. “It’s a very rare sub-type of Air mage. They carry scents to the people and creatures around them, influencing their feelings and behavior. It’s very subtle, and once someone knows what’s happening, they can usually shake it off, but that still takes time. It explains how he’s controlling all of those spiders, though. They’re acting very strangely, and I knew they couldn’t all be elementals.”

Wait, the spiders were elementals? Or just some of them? Did that make them like Miss Cupcakes, Brook, and Tempest?

The chancellor smiled slightly, barely touching a finger to the end of her velvety nose. “I guessed that the one that bit me was an elemental, but the ones here just acted like wild things. There was no intention in their actions, no intelligence in their eyes.”

Which eyes was he referring to? There were so many. Pandy gave a shudder. In spite of the circumstances, he chuckled. Really, why was he so relaxed? He was theoretically dying, surrounded by crazy people, in a criminal hideout, and he was laughing?

The smile faded, and his expression turned calculating. “Now, how do we keep the pheromones from affecting you? Maybe you should stay out here, after all.” She gave him a look, and he chuckled again, then tugged at his shirt, tearing away a corner that had snagged on something. Using his teeth, he tore this piece into two smaller pieces of fabric, which he balled up and stuffed into his nostrils.

“I can do this,” he told her, only slightly nasal, “but you can’t.”

Maybe she couldn’t stick filthy foreign objects into her sinuses, but she could just stop breathing. Not that she thought pheromones would affect her undead body like a living one anyway. Though…she remembered the way she’d felt drawn to Matilda the first time they met. Pandy had recovered quickly enough, going to Suzanne instead, but the blonde girl had definitely done something. Matilda was also oddly popular among her classmates, in spite of her difficult personality and her friendship with a Dark mage.

Eyes wide, Pandy stared up at Augustus, then pointedly covered her nose with her paws. She wasn’t going to smell anything inside that house. No way, no how. This really wasn’t the time to explain just how not-alive she was, but hopefully Augustus would take her word for it. Er, her paw for it. Whatever.

He frowned. “Are you sure? Pheromone wielders are incredibly dangerous. If they’re strong enough, they can convince you to laugh while they cut off your head. Or that it’s a good idea to cut off your own head.”

She nodded. Now that she knew, she was undoubtedly safer than he was, makeshift noseplugs or no makeshift noseplugs.

“All right,” he told her. “But this makes it all the more important that when we move, we move quickly and strike hard. If he has enough time to work on them, his gang will fight to the death to keep us back while he slips away. And whatever you do, don’t let him blow anything directly into your face. Even I might find it difficult to resist a direct application.”

‘Even’ he might, hmm? That was interesting, but this was not the time. If there ever would be a time. Asking Augustus what he used to do before he started chancelloring was probably a dangerous thing to do. She had the distinct feeling she’d been closer with her guess of assassin than she was comfortable with.

Rather than nodding again, Pandy took off, back toward the house. This time she wasn’t as careful. She already knew the men were all inside, probably because of a very reasonable fear of being bitten by errant arachnids. That meant she could move around with relative freedom, so long as she stayed out of direct line of sight from the windows, and didn’t run into any more spiders herself.

Undistracted by stats, spells, or Mana-based mathematics, Pandy circled the building. She found two spots where it looked like someone had quickly nailed a board up over a gap formed as the original structure began to shift. Unfortunately, both were right next to windows, and she could hear the sounds of rough voices and drunken laughter coming from just inside. Really, why wasn’t this building larger? All she needed was one empty room and she was certain she could slip inside without being noticed. Somehow.

Unfortunately, her inspection brought her back full circle, and she returned to Augustus a chastened and disappointed rabbit. Her ears drooped as he asked if she’d found a way in, if she could tell how many people were inside, or even where they were in the building. Pandy finally had to admit that she was a terrible scout, but Augustus didn’t seem upset.

“That’s all right,” he murmured quietly. “It was worth a try. We’ll just have to come up with another plan.” He turned to look at the building, eyes narrowing as he scanned it. “Was there a back door?”

Pandy shook her head. She was certain about this one, because she’d thought it strange that there was no back way out. The building was pretty small, though, probably no more than five or six hundred square feet, and if it was originally some kind of office building, it probably hadn’t needed a second exit. After all, she doubted there were fire codes in West Altheric.

Her head shot up, and she met Augustus’s eyes just as he started to smile. It was a slightly evil smile, one she definitely hadn’t seen on his face before, and somehow she knew what he was going to ask before he spoke. “You can use a Fire spell. Can you cast it here?”

Oh yes, she most definitely could, and even though she had serious reservations about burning people, she wouldn’t be burning them as long as they fled the building quickly enough. Pandy nodded, and Augustus’s grin widened.

She didn’t even wait for him to tell her to go, just hopped off for a third time, retracing her steps. As she went, she cast Spark every ten feet or so, making sure the little fire was right up against the wooden walls as she did. She knew from experience that even at level twenty, her small flames wouldn’t make treated and seasoned wood go up right away – which was fortunate, because otherwise Thaniel’s wardrobe would be a pile of ash – but many small fires should add up to one large fire, right?

Twenty Sparks and eighty Mana later, the outside of the building was burning merrily while Pandy and Augustus waited out front. When the first man stumbled out, releasing a billowing cloud of smoke that Pandy couldn’t smell because she still wasn’t willing to start breathing again, Augustus rapped him on the side of the head with his metal bar. In the movies, people were always struck in the back of the head, but the way the man crumpled said that Augustus knew what he was doing.

Two more men fell in exactly the same manner, until the fourth person to stumble out actually tripped over the pile of unconscious bodies, and knocked himself out by clonking his head on the stony ground. That was where what must have been Augustus’s luck ran out, and Pandy’s luck kicked in, because the next person to emerge was the Boss, and four more men were arrayed behind him, each with one hand holding a scrap of cloth over their faces, while the other gripped the hilt of a very business-like blade.

The slightly rotund lead figure raised a hand, motioning his minions forward, and as he did, he opened his fist, releasing a cloud of powder into the air. The heat of the fire caught it, billowing the fine dust outward, until they all seemed to be caught in the frozen scene of a snow globe. Then spiders began to pour in from the buildings nearby, and the battle began in earnest.