Lucky Rabbit

Everyone else was leaving as Matilda brought Pandy to the front steps, and before Pandy knew it, she was in a carriage and heading back to the school. At least, she assumed it was taking her back to Falconet. There wasn’t much point in doing the whole hypnosis bit in order to get Thaniel to run away by himself if they were just going to implicate themselves in ‘his’ abduction now.

She watched her human-time disappear and hoped that Augustus and Professor Beeswick had managed to watch the Mossley home without being caught. Augustus was supposed to knock on the door and demand the return of his ward if Pandy wasn’t in a carriage and headed back to school before ten-thirty, and according to the tall clock in the entryway, it had been a close thing. Hopefully the chancellor wasn’t standing on the steps of Matilda’s home while Pandy was already on her way back.

When the carriage rattled up to the steps of the school, it was long after lights-out, and Pandy was immensely relieved to see Augustus standing there, arms folded across his chest and a scowl on his face. They had one more scene to put on, and then the worst part of the evening would be over. Unfortunately, Pandy only had about fifteen minutes left of Shifting Faces, so if she wanted to be able to tell Augustus anything tonight, they needed to get this done.

The chancellor made that easy by all but ripping the carriage door from its hinges as soon as the vehicle rolled to a stop. Reaching in, he grasped Pandy’s arm, fingers gripping with gentle strength as his worried eyes swept over her, making sure she was intact. He pulled, and Pandy pretended to stumble as she nearly fell from the carriage.

“How dare you leave without permission!” Augustus roared, and Pandy flinched as curtains shifted in the dark windows of the student wing. This was exactly what they wanted, however, so she tore her arm from his grasp.

“I hate it here!” she yelled back, mentally apologizing to poor Thaniel. He would probably be hearing about these temper tantrums for years. “School is boring and I hate living here! I told you I want to go home, and you never listen! Well, Uncle Andres listened, an’ he said I could go to the party, and he’s as much my guardian as you are.”

Reaching into her pocket, she removed a copy of the letter Andres Forrest had written to his young cousin. Sir Beeswick hadn’t wanted to risk exposing anyone to lingering traces of the powder meant to make Thaniel more suggestible and friendly, so he’d produced this version before she left, declaring that no one would be able to tell it wasn’t the original, even with magic. Pandy had stored the copy in her Inventory for just this moment. Thrusting it against Augustus’s chest, she said, “There. Now I’m goin’ to bed.”

With that, she stormed by the chancellor, up the stairs, and past a gape-mouthed Ms. Davenport. Mr. Musgrave wasn’t far behind her, but he was focused on Augustus, not Thaniel. He was probably worried about how this would affect his job, though as far as he knew, Thaniel had been given permission to go by someone who had every right to give that permission.

Ms. Davenport reached for Pandy as she went by, but Augustus snapped, “Let him be.” He was staring down at the open letter, his lips pressed into a tight white line, and as Pandy entered the school building, she could hear the heavy paper crumpling in his fist. He would stuff it in his cache pocket before stomping up to his own rooms.

Augustus wasn’t exactly coming off as a shining example of adult maturity in all of this either, but truthfully he always seemed almost gleeful when planning his lines. Pandy wondered if he’d once been an aspiring actor, or if he’d simply been forced to keep his actions and emotions so tightly confined that this melodrama actually provided some outlet. Either way, he didn’t seem worried about what anyone thought of him.

Pandy couldn’t quite bring herself to slam the door when she entered Thaniel’s room. In theory, someone might still be sleeping, and she didn’t want to wake them up. She surveyed the room quickly, checking under the bed and in every nook and cranny. They still hadn’t figured out exactly how the Bound mouse had gotten into Thaniel’s room, though they were guessing it had scurried in when Thaniel or Pandy opened the door. Pandy didn’t want to transform in front of a spy and ruin everything.

She lost most of two more minutes to the fruitless search before putting her clothes into her Inventory and thinking,

Shifting Faces cancelled.

00:10:41 remaining today.

It was actually a huge relief when the dark room expanded around Pandy. As a rabbit, her field of vision covered the entire space, and what had been deep shadows became smudges instead. She froze in place, ears upright as she watched and listened for any indication that she wasn’t alone. She tended to be more sensitive to the presence of Dark elementals in this form, too, even though Bound were supposedly very difficult to detect.

Nothing drew her attention, and she felt her ears and whiskers relax before she hopped under the bed. The Plan called for her to remain here for at least an hour, just in case one of the conspirators came to check on Thaniel, so she couldn’t go talk to Augustus about the evening’s events just yet. There was someone else she could talk to, though he was a bit cranky these days.

she asked silently, resting her chin on her paws, her eyes locked on the door.

I think there are better ways we could be spending our time.

If we figure out how to release Ismara, everything else will work out.

Pandy sighed. She knew the god currently residing in her head was frustrated with the slow progress of their quest to free Ismara, and she completely understood. The problem was that they had no idea how to remove the heartstone from Thaniel’s chest, and none of them were willing to risk the boy’s life by experimenting. They weren’t even entirely certain Ismara was in the stone, much less what would happen if they did something radical like try to remove it by force. But Keros now knew that his girlfriend had been caught up in all of this, and while he’d seemed content to go with the flow when it was just him and Pandy on the line, he was very much not okay with Aglaea being involved.

Pandy soothed. The Dragon’s task was to check all available sources and see if he could find any references to… well, anything that might help them. More information about the stone Preston Avington stole from King Lawrence was at the top of the list, but if there was information about Zheraphon or anything about a conflict between Ismara and another god, that would be good, too.

The silence stretched out a little too long, and Pandy could feel Keros’s dissatisfaction before he finally spoke.

I think your chancellor is right.

The people we met tonight are nothing more than sacrificial pawns to cover up the tracks of whoever we’re really facing.

There’s no way these people have managed to create, much less maintain, a conspiracy that has any chance of success.

Pandy thought.

That makes sense.

There’s nothing in the game to indicate that Bastian is ashamed of his aunt or cousin.

Which means either the plot is still ongoing throughout the game – which I find unlikely – or Alvena Mossley was never implicated.

Pandy nodded. Keros’s original spell had only been intended to help make Pandy’s experience of this world more like her favorite game, but his failure to limit it properly had resulted in several unpleasant surprises. It would be nice if the magic actually worked for them for once.

Maybe.

Again, there’s no mention of this conspiracy or its resolution in Gacha Love.

That means that as long as nothing happens that will obviously change the events of the game, my magic shouldn’t help or hinder our efforts.

It does mean both Lady Mossley and Matilda should have some protection, since they’re supposed to be alive and free in two years.

But while maintaining the plot could be achieved by helping Pandy and Augustus uncover the plot with minimal fuss, it would work just as well if it aided the conspirators in remaining hidden. Either way, Bastian would end up at Condor as a ‘poor relation’, backstory and events intact.

That brought Pandy to a question she’d been meaning to ask for a while.

…

You have a very strange idea of normal.

My magic is definitely still doing something.

I just don’t know what.

I have a bad feeling we’re going to be very unhappy about it when we figure it out.

Well, that wasn’t ominous at all.

Me, too.

A flicker of humor reached Pandy, but neither of them spoke as they watched the clock. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twe- Pandy’s ears twitched. Outside the door, a shadow moved. She only saw it because there was always at least a little light in the hallway so the students could make it to the bathroom. Thaniel usually kept the lamp on his bedside table on low, providing just enough illumination that he didn’t wake up in total darkness, but Pandy had finally figured out that she could turn it off by patting the base, just like a touch-lamp in her old world. Whether it was her bunny instincts or the fact that she could see in the dark, at least a little bit, Pandy felt safer the darker it was.

The contrast between the faint light in the hall and the darkness within the room allowed Pandy to make out what looked like two feet, shifting just outside. Then something slid through the narrow gap beneath the door, and the dark foot-shapes moved away quickly. The only sound she heard was the faint shuffling of feet over the soft carpet that ran down the center of the hall.

A glance at the clock told Pandy that it was almost midnight, the time when she was supposed to sneak out of Thaniel’s room and meet Augustus and Professor Beeswick in the library. Of course, if something happened or someone came to Thaniel’s door, that part of the plan was null and void, and it looked like the chancellor and the Dragon were going to have to wait. That definitely wouldn’t please Professor Beeswick, who was already cranky that so much sneaking about had been happening at night and disturbing his beauty sleep.

When both clock hands pointed straight up, Pandy finally ventured forth from beneath the bed. She hopped forward, watching the object that had been thrust beneath the door with one suspicious eye, then the other. As she approached, the pale blotch resolved itself into a single piece of paper.

Using every sense she had to watch for traps, Pandy hopped closer. No strange smells reached her nose, and she couldn’t see any sign of the dust that seemed to cover every missive Thaniel received these days. In fact, the sheet looked exactly like the kind of paper the students used for their assignments. It was relatively flimsy, with lines pre-printed on it so the students couldn’t use excessively large handwriting to cut corners.

Technically, Pandy should put the sheet into her Inventory and then go back to hiding under the bed. When she didn’t show up by twelve-thirty, Augustus and the Dragon would go to sleep, and they would all reconvene after breakfast in the morning. That wasn’t what Pandy did. Instead, she used one paw to draw the folded top of the page back, revealing the three words crudely scrawled on the inside.

DON’T TRUST ANYONE