Lucky Rabbit

Everyone froze, then the dark fog of Pandy’s shield flowed forward as its occupants ran toward the box. Geraldine lagged behind, hindered by her skirt just enough that she was no longer inside the protective shell, and when she caught up, she bounced off of it and had to circle around to stare down into the open container.

Pandy told her System to drop the shield, and as soon as it popped like a smoke-filled bubble – sans actual smoke – she said, “Don’t touch it!” Thaniel and Geraldine’s hands stopped just short of the red and blue egg that rested on the upraised palms of a small statue of Ismara. The little idol sat inside the box, staring upwards with a benevolent smile on her face, the burnished egg in her hands gleaming in the torchlight.

“What is it?” Thaniel asked, eyes glued to the so-tempting ovoid.

“Soonya’s egg,” Pandy said, crouching down to look at it. She actually hadn’t thought about this part. In Gacha Love, Kaden took the egg and immediately formed a contract with the elemental they’d just ‘defeated’. Augustus was the only Air elementalist they had, however, and he didn’t form contracts. Hadn’t formed contracts? Technically, he wasn’t the Hidden Antihero Super Spy anymore, so he could contract an elemental if he wanted to.

Looking up at him, she said, “Can we just… move it? In the game, she bursts out as soon as Kaden touches the egg, but if someone who isn’t an Air mage picks it up, would the same thing happen? Or would she attack them?”

Augustus shook his head. “There are a few elementals who spawn from objects, and in every case, they react to an infusion of their own type of magic. They usually test their potential contractors, though this is the first time I’ve heard of one returning to its object after being released. I know of a few that have never been released, and are,” he glanced at the children, who were listening with rapt fascination, “hidden away for the safety of all.”

“So I can touch it?” Thaniel asked, his hand already moving forward again. Fortunately for him, the answer seemed to be ‘yes’, because he picked up the little egg – which was about the size of some quail eggs Pandy had once seen in an Asian market – and nothing happened. A grin brighter than sunshine lit his face, making his dimples flash. “It’s warm!”

Geraldine, Abbington, Brook, and a dangerously thoughtful-looking Miss Cupcakes crowded around him, each of the children taking a turn holding the egg. Brook sniffed it, nodded her head as if satisfied, then sat on her haunches and left them to it. Augustus was watching the feline, whose tail had begun to twitch as the egg passed into Geraldine’s hand, but he tipped his head toward Pandy, indicating – she hoped – that he would make sure the egg remained intact while she took care of the rest.

Turning toward the box, Pandy reached down inside of it, fumbling in the corners until something clicked, and the sides fell open with a soft clatter. Fortunately, everyone else was distracted by Miss Cupcakes’ lunge for the egg – which was halted when Augustus’s elemental, Zephra, caught the cat in a whirlwind that spun her around until she abruptly vanished, reappearing next to the torch on the wall.

Well, that was interesting, but Pandy was busy with other things. Specifically, setting up the portable shrine to Ismara. The sides of the box folded down, relatching once they formed a pedestal for the idol that its box-shape had been protecting. Once the statue was fully exposed – carved face turned up, open hands extended in front of her, and the graceful folds of her dress draping from her shoulders – Pandy knelt in front of it. Folding her own hands in front of her, mainly because she didn’t know what else to do with them, she started to pray, but halted before she even got Ismara’s name out.

Opening her Inventory, Pandy stared at the second item listed. 

Unknown Pink Summoning Pearls (Qty: 3)

Taking one out, Pandy rolled it around in her palm, then carefully set it onto the upraised hands. It was even smaller than the egg, but it looked so right there that Pandy barely even second-guessed herself before pressing her hands together and saying, “Ismara-”

That was all it took. One moment she was kneeling on the cold stone floor, listening to the children bicker about who got to keep the egg, and the next Pandy had been swept away, and this time it wasn’t to a dark, featureless plane.

“It’s about time,” Keros grumbled. He was lying on a suspiciously familiar bed that occupied most of a room that looked suspiciously like Pandy’s old studio apartment, holding what looked suspiciously like Pandy’s phablet – a term she hated, but which was the only appropriate word for something that claimed to be a phone, but had a screen that was almost seven inches across.

It was the one expensive item she owned, mainly because she always bought insurance on it, which meant she could get a new one every month or so, when the old one was destroyed by a freak cyclone or swallowed by an elephant. Of course, none of the major phone carriers would accept her as a customer any more, but there was always somebody who didn’t yet know she was bad luck on the hoof – or the paw, these days.

The once hyper-muscular god was sprawled amidst a collection of discarded snack wrappers and empty pizza boxes. His hair was mussed, his beard scraggly, and stains decorated his formerly pristine toga. He barely even bothered to glance up, swiping and tapping rapidly at the phone until a familiar flower-scented figure rushed past Pandy and threw herself at him.

“Kero-Kero!” Aglaea cried, peppering his shocked face with kisses. Then she drew back, wrinkling her nose as she plucked a stray whisker from her lip and wiped transferred crumbs from her lovely dress. Pulling away, she sat up on the bed, with Pandy turning red and averting her eyes in order to avoid seeing all the goddess-bits exposed by the draped cloth making up her dress.

“What happened to you?” the goddess demanded, a small thundercloud beginning to form above her head. That wasn’t a metaphor, either – an actual thunderhead began to roil over the bed, and a few drops of rain darkened the bedclothes.

Keros wiped frantically at the phone screen, then realized what he was doing and thrust the device behind him so he could sit up and open his arms to his girlfriend. Pandy had seen him Very Muscular and Very Skinny, but now he definitely sported a bit of a paunch, which pulled at the belt of his toga.

“Aglaea! How did you-?” He turned an accusatory glare on Pandy, and she shrugged helplessly. It really had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Never mind that,” the goddess said, waving away the question and Keros’s unkempt appearance in one graceful gesture. “The god looking for you is named Zheraphon. He was a rival World God for this planet, and apparently he never officially conceded the role. Since Ismara has failed to turn up to either accept or deny our dear Pandora’s foray onto this little planet, he claims Ismara has defaulted on her responsibility without first meeting the minimum millennium of service required to accrue vacation time. He’s petty and awful, but as a World God, even a potential one, he has more power than you, both magically and politically.”

Keros frowned, brushing absently at his filthy toga and ragged hair. “Zheraphon? I’ve never even heard-”

Aglaea swept right over him, her words tumbling over each other now that her initial relief was over. She was already darting looks around the room, as if someone might be hiding in the all-but-nonexistent shadows – Pandy tended to buy daylight bulbs, because her luck and dark spaces were rarely a good combination.

“You have to find Ismara, Kero,” she told her boyfriend, nothing bubbly or silly about her now. “Zher’s gotten the court date moved up, and you know that’s almost impossible to do, and even more difficult to undo. If she doesn’t show up within eight months and not only agree to allow Pandora to stay, but provide some sort of proof that she gave permission in the first place, you’re going back to the rock, and the eagle is coming out of retirement to eat your liver. I’m doing everything I can to distract him, and Themis has filed several motions, but they’re taking their time in reviewing them, and she can’t do more without risking being held in contempt for dilatory tactics.”

Keros blanched, but said, “I thought we had more time. It takes years – decades! – for things like this to reach Zeus. But I have found Ismara. She’s-”

A smile broke out on Aglaea’s face as he spoke, but she laid a finger across his lips before he could say more. “Don’t tell me,” she told him. “I may be forced to serve as a hostile witness, and the less I know, the better.” Turning to Pandy, she said, “Please, help him. And for my sake… make sure he takes a bath and visits a barber.” With that, and a slightly teary-eyed twinkle, she vanished, leaving Pandy and Keros alone in Pandy’s apartment.

“You know where Ismara is?” Pandy demanded, before Keros could say anything else. She really wanted to know what he was doing in her apartment, if this actually was her apartment, but that could wait. She had no idea how long this little meeting was going to last, so she needed to get to the important things first.

Keros nodded. “I’ve been stuck here for months. I spent the first few weeks trying to get out, but the door and windows don’t open. Once I realized I couldn’t get out, I found this magical contraption, and have been playing your game ever since. And there she was.”

Months? He’d only been gone for a week, or maybe two. How had months passed here? But Keros was holding up his – or rather, Pandy’s – phone, showing a screenshot he’d taken of a moment in Gacha Love. It was the end of the game, after all the wooing and the killing and even after the defeat of Ascyra. If the player acquired the Charm of Shifting Faces, they could watch brief epilogues about the various side characters while acting as yet another character. Pandy’s favorite was watching Dorian get engaged to Cora Treadway, because she always figured they deserved each other. Now, she wasn’t so certain, but in any case, this was from a different scene.

No matter what, Killian had to die. The only real difference lay in who struck the final blow. Pandy preferred to go with a healing-type Clara, especially since you almost had to choose Dorian in order to unlock the best battle-Clara. That meant her chosen love interest almost always took down Killian. This shot was of the moment battle-Clara invoked Divine Retribution to finish Killian after Dorian weakened him.

Pandy squinted at it, desperately trying to ignore the look of shock and agony on the face that looked so much like her Lian’s. There was Dorian, crumpled on the ground, his Bittercold Gladius shattered into icy fragments, and a deep crimson stain forming on his chest where Killian had stabbed him. That, too, struck harder than it used to. The person pictured there, in all his bloodied, pixelized glory, was a real living, breathing boy in Pandy’s new world, and he did not deserve what had happened to him in this possible future, even if he did survive it.

“There,” Keros said, jabbing a finger at the image. With a practiced movement, he used his fingers to expand the image, zooming in on the crystal at Killian’s throat. It was the one Keros had once hypothesized might be Thaniel’s heartstone, and Pandy had to admit that it was a dead ringer for the black chunk of crystal now embedded in the younger boy’s chest.

As the greater image blurred, something in the center of that stone actually sharpened. A pale oval, then a curved back surrounded by black hair, legs tucked into a fetal curl, arms wrapped around the figure’s knees. The gender was inconclusive from the bodyparts exposed, though the long hair certainly argued for a female, both in Pandy’s first world and her new one, but she wasn’t passing judgement just yet.

More importantly, that wasn’t how digital images worked. You couldn’t have just part of it that was at a higher resolution than the rest. At least, Pandy was pretty sure you couldn’t. Something about that – obvious magic in what was otherwise a piece of her old home – gave Pandy a strange sense of vertigo, everything feeling abruptly distant and hollow.

“How could you possibly see that?” she asked, and she could barely recognize her own voice, which was, she finally realized, really her own, not that of Alexandra Wells. She reached up and touched the floating image, sharp in a sea of enormous pixels, and her hand was hers, too; a little too thin, pale but unfreckled, with fingernails gnawed to nubs.

“I am a god,” Keros said, puffing out his chest so a few more crumbs fell to the already-dirty floor. Then he deflated and muttered, “Besides, I’ve played the game more than three hundred times now, and Dorian is the best. How could I miss it?”

Lowering the phone, he turned it back toward himself, greasy chip-fingers tapping at it so quickly she could barely see them move. “Now we know where she is. We just have to get to her. But first, we have to get out.”

That feeling of dissociation was only growing stronger, and when she raised her hands again, she saw that they were almost as pixelated as the game image. Some far corner of her mind realized that she was fading, breaking apart, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “How do we… do that?” she asked, her voice languid. She began to fall as the room shattered around her.

Keros stuck his fingers into the phone, pulling out a shining cord that seemed to be made entirely of ones and zeroes, stuck together in an endless numerical string. He twirled it like some kind of digital cowboy about to rope himself a calf, then threw it toward Pandy. She felt a sudden jerk, and the god grunted, some of his color fading before he dropped the phone and grabbed the string of numbers in both hands. A wild grin crossed his face.

“Just like this,” he said.