Lucky Rabbit

Pandy just hoped there wouldn’t be spiders. Possessed arachnids hadn’t been in this scene of Gacha Love, so maybe they wouldn’t be here, either. That meant the worst they’d have to deal with were zombies – better known as Bound – and a few Apparitions. Oh, and Daedalus. Because the rest of it only showed up after they took Killian down to fifty percent health and he fled. Which also meant they’d have to watch out for the villain making a run for it, but first they had to kick his butt at least a little bit.

There was an almost Zen quality to flying through the air, and Pandy had spent so many hours doing exactly that – in another secret lab, even – that she automatically adjusted her landing so she could take off again right away. The Hop that threw Miller off of her bounced her to the ceiling, some eight feet up, then straight back into Daedalus’s smug, obnoxious face.

The Substitute Villain took two long bunny paws to the cheeks and shrieked, swinging his knife at the leaping lagomorph. Pandy had already moved on, though, and while his movement meant she didn’t quite go where she meant to, that was all right, because when she hit the wall, she bounced like a ping-pong ball spiked by the Grandmaster of… well, ping-pong. There had to be one of those, right?

Hop. Hop. Hop. Pandy bounced off of Lady Ruth, sending the woman staggering back. She produced a wail that was uncannily similar to the one Daedalus made, but Pandy was already moving on. Another bounce to and from Daedalus, who managed to drag the tip of his knife along Pandy’s side this time, in spite of the red fluid streaming from his cheeks where her claws had connected. She hadn’t used Scratch, mainly because she hadn’t thought of it, but that was probably for the best because eyeballs were gross and squishy, and she didn’t want to have to clean that out of her fur.

Augustus wasn’t taking all of this lying down, either. He crouched, trying to stay below Pandy’s flight path, and lunged for Daedalus. A second knife appeared in his off-hand, though she hadn’t seen him reach into his pocket cache. The new weapon was a silvery mirror to Daedalus’s black, poisonous blade, and when the two blades came together, they didn’t produce the same bright chime that she’d heard earlier. No, this was a screech, like claws on a chalkboard. The sound didn’t seem to surprise either man, but Pandy wobbled.

A Spinning Bunny Chop to Lady’s Ruth’s head failed, with Lady Ruth managing to stagger to her feet as Pandy wibbled, causing the side of Pandy’s back foot to whack painfully into the wall behind the woman instead. The stone cracked down the middle as Pandy fumbled her next Hop and slid down the wall. That was all right though, because it put her at the right angle to see that Miller had climbed to his feet, his expression as blank as ever, and Keros had come to his knees behind the boy.

Pandy thought again, tucking her body into a Bouncing Bunny Bowling Ball that rammed into Miller’s chest. A sparkling flume of crushed essence stone sprayed away from the point of impact, and Pandy realized he’d pretty much rolled in the stuff when he went down the first time. It didn’t seem to bother him, even though she could see it crusted around his nostrils and eyes.

Miller went down, tumbling over Keros’s kneeling form, causing the god to grunt and recoil. The boy’s flailing foot caught in the god’s tattered toga, tearing it away from his chest and very nearly causing a wardrobe malfunction they would all regret.

Daedalus and Augustus were still dancing, and Keros had gathered himself enough to use his Mighty Thews – and significantly greater mass – to pin Miller down, which left Pandy to deal with Lady Ruth. The woman was watching her warily, and Pandy didn’t think Ruth would believe she was nothing but a helpless bunny, especially after she’d split the wall with a Bunny Kick.

Fortunately, the redhead didn’t seem interested in a physical confrontation, and she circled around, trying to keep Keros and Miller between herself and the Homicidal Hare. Meeting Pandy’s eyes over Keros’s back, which was rippling with veins and big wiggly muscles as he held a still-silent Miller in place, Lady Ruth said, “You know, it doesn’t have to be this way.” She took a sharp step to the side as Pandy hopped up onto an overturned chair.

“You’ve only been in the city for a little while, Lady Eurydice. I can see how Chancellor Blackwood might have swept someone of your… background off her feet, but I assure you my Lord can offer you far more than any mortal man.” Her eyes burned with a fanaticism Pandy recognized from street corners and videos promising to teach viewers the One Trick Doctors Don’t Want You To Know.

“Zheraphon will cleanse this world of all but Dark magic,” Lady Ruth went on, taking a tiny step forward in her enthusiasm. “We will be the kings and queens of all. Never again will anyone look down on us for having the ‘wrong’ magic. We’ll control everything and everyone, and they’ll finally see just how wrong they were about us.” Pandy could feel something plucking at her – an urge to agree with what the woman was suggesting. It felt like an errant breeze pulling at her whiskers though, not the compulsion Lady Ruth was probably going for.

Oooookay, so Pandy now knew at least part of what Zheraphon had promised his… was cult the right word? Or was this a religion, just one that had fallen out of favor to the point where only a few desperate Dark elementalists still practiced it? She’d never been exactly clear on what the difference was.

In either case, Pandy now had two choices. She could go along with this nonsense in an effort to find out where Lian was, knowing that Augustus and Keros – why was he here? – would probably be endangered as a result. Or she could kick Lady Ruth in her crazy-face.

Pandy thought, leaping forward, putting just enough spin into it that she whirled around a central axis like a ballerina on steroids, her big back paw blazing in a circle around her. She’d practiced this a hundred times in her secret lab, and she could kick a fly off the wall with one paw. In this case, her target was much larger than a fly.

Lady Ruth tried to dodge, ducking down as she let out a little shriek. Pandy hadn’t expected her to just hold still and take the hit, so she’d aimed for a spot in the center of Ruth’s chest, where she would still strike a shoulder if the woman moved right or left, and land a full Foot to the Face if Lady Ruth ducked. What Pandy hadn’t expected was that the woman would actually retaliate with more than words and magic.

The knife wasn’t particularly large, but it didn’t have to be to skewer a rabbit. Pandy felt it slice up the inside of her extended leg and bury itself to the hilt in her belly. Red numbers cascaded across her vision as Ruth staggered back, driven by the force of Pandy’s kick, her back thumping hard into the wall.

-8 LF

-27 LF

-41 LF

-16 LF

The tip of the knife lodged in something that was probably Pandy’s spine, and Lady Ruth let out a wild laugh, lifting Pandy’s limp body into the air as she raised a hand filled with some of the crushed essence stone, which she’d apparently scooped up from the floor. With a quick motion, she flipped the knife end over end and drove it – along with the rabbit’s limp body, parts of which felt disconcertingly unattached – into the wooden table.

When Ruth released the knife, Pandy found her eyes drawn to the clear and perfect shape of the polished oval stone attached to the end of the hilt. Lady Ruth dropped the handful of dust over Pandy, and bared every tooth she owned, which Pandy was distantly surprised to note was not actually a full set. She was missing a few teeth in the back, and it somehow made her slightly less menacing. Who could be properly afraid of someone who’d obviously missed more than a few dental visits?

And Pandy wasn’t afraid. She was pissed. These people had been playing them the whole time. They were trying to bring down the royal family. They were trying to bring down Ismara. They were trying to ruin Gacha Love. Worst of all, they kept stabbing Pandy and her boyfriend.

With her spinal cord severed, Pandy had no control over most of her body, but she didn’t even care. She knew she should get to casting Air of Superiority or some other offensive spell, but she couldn’t even see Augustus, Keros, or Bryan. What would happen to them if she used such a powerful spell in an enclosed space?

At the very least she should use Minor Heal to fix her poor broken little body, but she didn’t care about that, either. For the most part, she liked being a rabbit, and she definitely liked being Eurydice Haupe, but right now? Right now she needed to be a Demon.

she thought.

Innate Magic successful.

Woooo, this should be fun!

She barely felt her body fall away. What she did feel was strength pouring back into her, as if her physical form had actually been holding her back, blocking her full power all this time. It was like music filling her soul, like honey dissolving on her tongue, like eating applewood smoked gouda for the very first time.

Lady Ruth went absolutely white. She staggered back, holding out her hands, her eyes wide and rolling as they went from Pandy to the body on the table. Someone else gave a muffled shout, but Pandy’s focus was on the woman in front of her. She reached out, noting that her pale, pale hand now had red talons in place of nails, and curled her fingers around Ruth’s neck. It took so little effort. She just squeezed the tiniest bit and those eyes bugged out, the tongue protruding as Ruth gave a strangled squawk.

Black hair coiled, falling around Pandy’s bare shoulders as she leaned in, sniffing at that last delicious breath, the escaping Darkness that came from a mage at the end of their life. It was like a compulsion, a need to feast that was stronger than any hunger she’d ever felt before. Since coming to this world, Pandy had eaten only for entertainment and to pretend she was Perfectly Normal, and now she found that she was starving.

“Rabbit!”

“Pandora!”

The two voices came simultaneously, distantly reaching her through the haze of hunger. At first she thought the answering growl came from her belly, but when she turned her head, still gripping the Dark mage’s neck in one hand, she realized it was coming from her own throat. Two not-Dark beings were there, and she dismissed them with a glance, before her gaze landed on the figure splayed across the floor. The larger of the two figures held the body down, but that was all he held: the body.

“Come,” she told the elemental bound within. She could see the magic linking it to the shell, but that was nothing to her. It spun away, turning to wisps of Dark that she drew in, using the magic within the spell to fuel her own continued existence. The Demon rose out of the suddenly-still body, passing through the form of the one holding him down. That one was strange, with a brilliant inferno banked within him –  a volcano that lay quiescent, buried beneath tons of inert stone. He shuddered as Dark touched his Fire, but the blaze wasn’t snuffed. Not yet.

Another form rose to stand next to her. It, too, was alabaster and obsidian, with deep red talons and lips. It took the form of the one whose body it had occupied, but was itself as well, perhaps more itself than it had ever been in this beleaguered world.

“Eat,” she told it, releasing the now unconscious Dark elementalist. The newly freed Demon wrapped itself around the mage, and when the body fell, it was utterly empty of magic and life alike. She turned her gaze on the Fire mage and one other. Air, and strong, but not an elementalist. No threads bound it to the elementals that hovered nearby, futilely attempting to block her. She could have killed him, but there was no point. He was no danger to her, and she would get almost no sustenance from him.

But there was one more. It sat beside the table where her discarded flesh lay, already falling apart without her power to maintain it. Why had she been wasting magic on such a worthless shell? She couldn’t remember. She did, however, remember her hunger. She advanced on the final figure, which hunched over the table, head in his hands as his whole body trembled. He was strong. Strong enough to feed her for days, maybe weeks. Though there was something odd about-

The Air mage stepped in her way. “Rabbit,” he said again, then nothing more. She was glad. She was tired of listening to them plead. Tired of killing, only to be forced to kill again and again. She wanted this to be over, but that was not her choice to make. Her choices were small. Who to eat, who to allow to live. She… found that she wanted to let him live.

Stepping to the side, she tried to go around, but the mage moved between her and her prey again. She growled in frustration, and he winced, touching his temple with his hand. His fingers traced the bare skin there, then dropped, dipping into his shirt. A flash of magic, a connection, and she stiffened as he pulled out a glass and metal contraption. This he settled onto the bridge of his nose, and from somewhere far within her, she heard a voice say a single word.

Augustus.