Lucky Rabbit

Eventually, Thaniel fell asleep, tears still staining his face. When Lian tried to move away, Thaniel partially woke, and began crying again. The same happened when anyone tried to take Pandy, which meant Lian and Captain Reedsley were forced to speak where Pandy could hear everything.

“What will happen now, Captain?” Lian asked, expression as calm as if he hadn’t just discovered he was an orphan. He was still a little pale, with red blotches high on his cheekbones, but otherwise he could have been asking about the weather.

The soldier sighed, again ruffling his hair in what seemed to be a habitual gesture. “Please understand, Lord Killian, that this is now a matter for the courts, or perhaps the Queen Regent herself. As neither of you are adults, a guardian will be assigned until you reach your majority. My paperwork indicates that your mother has also passed away – my condolences – and that she was an only child. I assume that means someone in your father’s family will watch over you and young Nathaniel for the next four years.”

“Three and a half years,” Lian corrected, voice cold as ice. “I’m fourteen and a half.”

One of Captain Reedsley’s slightly overenthusiastic eyebrows lifted, and he said, “Of course,” in an admirably neutral tone. “For now, without knowing who that person will be, we’ll return you to school, and Nathaniel… I suppose I’ll take him home with me. I don’t have any sons, but my younger daughter will be pleased to have a playmate, even for a short time.”

Lian’s face hardened. “I won’t leave my brother.”

“Then,” said the captain with surprising gentleness, “I suppose you’ll both have to come with me.”

That was exactly what happened. Thaniel’s things were quietly packed up, and Lian claimed he didn’t want anything, since most of his clothes and other possessions were at school. The Father had taken the only carriage when he left, and it was now part of an active investigation, so someone hired a run-down carriage from the nearest town, and in the morning Thaniel and a few small trunks filled with clothes were loaded up.

Cassie was staying on. Her wages would be paid for by the estate, which Pandy was sure meant she would spend all day sleeping and braiding daisy chains while the house fell down around her ears. Marta no longer had anyone to cook for, so she was to be let go as soon as she closed up the kitchen. Still, she was there to fold the little boy in her soft and motherly embrace, and assured him that the moment he returned, she would be there to cook for him again.

Thaniel cried again as they left, the carriage jumping and jerking over the washed-out dirt road, and Pandy took the opportunity to gather more Corruption Points, since Lian had already done his Purify trick two more times as he helped his little brother get dressed. She was glad that in spite of the slightly creepy name, she could actually comfort the little boy even as she regained her points.

Once they were on their way, with the captain leading the way on his horse, one soldier driving the carriage, and another riding his horse along the road behind them, Lian pulled a thick book from somewhere and began to read. Seeing this, Thaniel sat quietly beside his big brother, opening and closing his precious book and generally mimicking everything the older boy did. Still, he was only almost six, and he’d had a very stressful night and day, so eventually the tousled curls came to rest against Lian’s arm, and the dark crescent of lashes lay still on his round cheeks.

Lian failed to notice, engrossed as he was in a book with the riveting title of Quantifying Charms and Chores: A Compendium of Common Celestial Conjurations. It would have seemed utterly mundane, but the creators of Gacha Love truly seemed to enjoy creating lore for their otherwise uncomplicated world.

There were books lying around everywhere in the game, and you could ‘read’ them – or rather a summary of them – without spending any Stamina. One of the love interests had a hidden requirement that you read at least ten of these books, which was a low bar given how many there were. Two of the others weren’t affected by the number of books you read, and it became progressively more difficult to pursue a romantic relationship with the fourth if you read more than five. It was little details like this that made the game so unique.

In any case, by her fifth or sixth New Game Plus, Pandy thought she had done everything there was to do. Then there was a – relatively – huge uproar in the GL fan community when someone managed to unlock a secret achievement by reading every single book in the game. This allowed them to keep one percent of the Stamina they earned in their previous playthrough when they started a new one. That might not seem like much, but each time they got it again, the perk stacked, up to ten percent.

Over time – a lot of time – this resulted in a massively overpowered character at the beginning of the next playthrough, so the player could skip a lot of the grindy bits of the game. And, as it happened, Pandy had a lot of time on her hands, since she had no friends or family to lay claim to it. By the time she died, she’d earned the ‘Bibliophile’s Bounty’ achievement more than a dozen times, in hopes that if she did it often enough she would unlock yet another secret achievement.

All of this meant that Pandy knew exactly what lay within Lian’s rather pretentious-sounding tome. It was actually a quite useful collection of charms for things like doing laundry and washing dishes, often by making deals with the small elementals that inhabited this world. For example, Gleamglows, the weakest of Light elementals, were quite fond of sugary treats, and would gladly accept a cookie in exchange for using their sunshine-like glow to freshen clothes that really should have been relegated to the hamper several days earlier. The information within that book was every lazy teenager’s dream.

With Thaniel asleep and Lian reading about the best way to bribe an elemental to clean his toilet, Pandy finally felt safe in summoning her Status screen. When it was up, it covered a good bit of her field of vision, and it wouldn’t do to miss Lian sneaking in another attempt at forcing her soul out of her body, or whatever it was he was doing.

Name: Pandy

Species: Rabbit (Deceased)

Age: 24

LF: 0/0

Mana: 0/0

Stats

Strength: 3 Intelligence: 12 Agility: 10Skills

Hop: Lv. 8 (12.5%) Bite: Lv. 5 Scratch: Lv. 7Corruption Points: 12

Well, not really surprisingly, that was no help at all, other than showing her actual number of Corruption Points, which she promptly decided to call CP, even though the only person who would ever know was herself. Still, it was always good to make sure that all the voices in her head were on the same page.

So, that left her with about a zillion questions and no answers at all. If she was actually in Gacha Love, there would be multiple tabs to flip through, as well as an extensive Help section, explaining what each spell, stat, and skill did, and how to level them. Of course, Pandy hadn’t had to use that in quite some time, so she thought about what she did know.

First, she should have more stats. Strength, Intelligence, and Agility were only three of the original eight, which also included Looks, Style, Talent, Charm, and Reputation. Once the main character, Clara, triggered the romance flag with one or more of the male love interests, she also got an ‘Affection’ stat for him.

There were technically twelve stats possible, though each of the love interests had a rival, and usually once one of the rivals became Clara’s potential partner, the other one was no longer interested. That meant that without using the gacha mechanic – allowing you to get choices you otherwise couldn’t –  you would only have a realistic maximum of ten stats.

Which was seven more than Pandy currently had. Some of these she could understand. After all, what did a rabbit need with Style, Talent, or Reputation? Looks and Charm, however, she should have by the bucketload, and it would be incredibly satisfying to see a few extremely high numbers on her otherwise pathetic Stat sheet.

With a sigh, Pandy flopped backwards in Thaniel’s lap, exposing her belly and letting her big bunny feet stick up in the air. She’d finally gotten a bath that morning, if only so the dirt on her fur wouldn’t ruin still more of Thaniel’s limited wardrobe. A beam of sunlight slanted in through the small window, and motes of dust thrown up by the horses’ hooves glittered like gold dust in the light.

This sparkling ray fell on Pandy’s fluffy, brilliant white fur, making it look like she held the same sort of soft radiance visible around Gleamglow elementals in the original game. How was it possible that a creature so adorable didn’t even have a Charm stat?

A hand grabbed one of Pandy’s fluffy feet, pulling the leg straight out, twisting it one way and then the other. Lian’s face leaned down, his blue eyes shrewd as he stared into her bright red ones. Darn her crimson orbs anyway. If she did have a Charm stat, she’d probably lose two points just because they were so precisely the color of fresh-spilled blood.

“This leg was dangling by a single tendon and a scrap of flesh,” Lian said conversationally. “Your body was cold, and rigor was beginning to set in. There is no way – no way – you were simply badly injured. Not to mention that Father is-”

His face darkened, but he managed to continue. “Was terrible at caring for even the simplest of wounds. Whenever Thaniel got a scratch or cut, Father would send for Marta, Cassie, or even me, rather than washing and wrapping it himself. He never could have performed the sort of healing that would be necessary to perfectly repair such a terrible injury, even if his magic worked that way.”

Releasing Pandy’s leg, Lian leaned back, glancing at his brother, who was still sleeping peacefully, head against the thin cushion and a little drool gathering at the corner of his mouth. “But whatever you are, I don’t think you plan to hurt Thaniel. Gods know you’ve had plenty of opportunities over the last several weeks, since Cassie wouldn’t know how to care for a child if someone handed her a manual written for an audience consisting entirely of idiots.”

Well, that was one thing they agreed on, at least.

“Thaniel loves you,” Lian said after several seconds of listening to the muffled clopping of the horses’ hooves against the packed dirt. “So I’ve decided to give you one chance. One. I don’t know exactly what you are, but for all his failures as a parent, I do know our father cared for us. He wouldn’t have given Thaniel a pet that posed a danger to him. At least not intentionally.”

His blue eyes were cold enough to freeze popsicles when he said, “But if I ever, for even one moment, believe you hurt my brother, or led him into temptation, I will make it my life’s mission to utterly destroy you. Not just banish you back to whatever plane you came from, but wipe out every particle of your essence in such a way that you will never again exist in any form. Do we understand each other?”

Pandy stared up at the young man, wondering how she had ever failed to notice that he was ‘Killian the Villian’, as he was popularly known on Gacha Love’s wiki and subreddit. There was the scowl full of utter disdain that had inspired fluttering hearts in tens of thousands of masochistic teenage girls. There was the frigid gaze, the curled lip, and, of course, the single perfect lock of buttery golden hair curling in the very center of his forehead.

Slowly, Pandy nodded, even going so far as to lift one front paw to her forehead in an attempt to salute. This gesture melted a single note of absolute confusion into the frosty glower. Lian nodded, just once, then sat back, staring into the depths of his book with a look scarcely less ferocious than the one he had turned on her.

And now Pandy really, really wanted a popsicle.