Lucky Rabbit

According to Professor Beeswick, it was about ten minutes to eight. The live-in students should all be up, have had their turn in the bathroom, and be doing last minute things to get ready for school. Zephra, Augustus’s more powerful and also more reliable elemental companion, was watching Thaniel, who was still fast asleep in Augustus’s apartment. Geraldine and Abbington were supposed to be taking notes for him, and Thaniel obviously planned to milk this unexpected vacation for all it was worth.

“You’ll have to be Thaniel this morning, Pandora,” Augustus told her as he accepted a fresh shirt and jacket from the Dragon. He smelled of smoke and sweat, and there were a few tears in the clothes he had been wearing, but his skin was entirely intact, thanks to Pandy’s almost automatic healing. Not that she watched him change. No, well, yes she did, but it was only to make sure he was fine.

Pandy had to go into Professor Beeswick’s hidden rooms so she could put on Thaniel’s uniform, but thankfully it was intact, since she’d taken it off before bed. There were a few drops of blood on the sleeve cuff, thanks to Leo slicing her hand open, and it, too, smelled of smoke after the Incident in the Carriage, but it would pass.

While she changed behind the curtain, Augustus explained the new plan, such as it was, and Pandy filled him in on the highlights of her evening. He was suspiciously quiet when she described Lord Pointy Beard, but he didn’t offer any guesses as to a name – not that Pandy would probably have recognized it.

Once they were as ready as they could be, Augustus and Pandy-Thaniel waited anxiously just on the other side of the door leading to the entry hall for the breakfast bell to ring. Pandy waited anxiously, in any case, though the only sign that Augustus was worried was the rhythmic tapping of his fingers against his other forearm. They didn’t have to wait long, even though they’d dressed as quickly as possible, but they couldn’t immediately join the horde, instead listening as voices and footsteps thundered through the entry hall, then died down again. They needed to be the last ones in to breakfast.

All of the students had ten minutes to get to the dining hall and take their seats, or they were considered late. With Augustus ‘gone’, that meant Ms. Davenport was in charge, and she very much did not like Indolence or Malingering. Pandy could hear the shift in the cheerful chitchat as the children entered the dining hall and realized the hall supervisor was seated at the central position.

“Are you ready?” Augustus asked Pandy as they heard the dining room door click shut behind the last student. She swallowed hard but nodded, and together they stepped out into the entry hall. Not surprisingly, Sir Bailey was there in her servant garb, and she gave them a little grin as she dramatically opened the dining room hall door once again.

“-expect you to exhibit the excellent manners you have learned-” Ms. Davenport broke off mid-speech as she realized her moment had been interrupted. Her brows went up and her bottom went down as she sat in the chair she’d probably vacated only a moment before. Pandy surreptitiously glanced toward the tables where Lamonia Kimball and Matthias Winstanley were sitting. Lamonia looked distinctly relieved for a solid second, while Matthias’s mouth had dropped open and he half-stood as if he’d run from the room.

Augustus and Pandy-Thaniel entered side by side; not touching, but also not showing any of the barely suppressed frustration or anger that had become their norm over the past week. Pandy stopped and pulled out Thaniel’s empty chair, while Augustus went on toward the raised dais. Just before he reached it, however, Pandy left her chair behind, running toward Augustus and giving him a fierce hug, as if overcome by impulse and emotion.

Augustus, for his part, gently returned the hug, then ruffled Pandy-Thaniel’s golden curls, which made Pandy scowl, then laugh, as if this was an in-joke between the two of them. Only then did she return to Thaniel’s seat, while Augustus climbed the steps to the dais and everyone else in the room watched, mouths agape.

Geraldine was almost vibrating with curiosity as Pandy sat down beside her, and the girl had her lower lip tightly clenched between her teeth in order to keep that curiosity from spilling out into words. Abbington was more subdued, but his eyes sparkled behind the glasses he’d gotten from Squawkward Spire. Since then, the boy had been more interested and involved in what was going on around him, undoubtedly because he could see more of it, but his calm and thoughtful nature still shone through.

When the carts emerged from the kitchen hall, the sound of their wheels and the rising murmurs throughout the dining room merging with the clatter of dishes into one indistinguishable blur, Geraldine abruptly leaned down to peer beneath the table. “What?” she said, almost too low for even Pandy to make it out. When she looked up again, it was obvious that the last shred of her self-control had vanished.

“Miss Cupcakes says you’re-” she curled down two fingers and her thumb, turning one hand into a bunny which she ‘hopped’ across her plate. Abbington’s eyes widened. Pandy nodded, but made the sign for ‘button your lips’, then pretended to throw away an invisible key, just in case the button thing wasn’t as universal as she hoped it was.

Fortunately, a towering stack of half-inch thick pancakes was placed into the center of their table at that moment, along with a bowl of elegantly cut fruit, a plate of butter-pats shaped like flowers, and a carafe of syrup. Pandy could tell Geraldine just wanted to know what was going on, but even she had become better at keeping secrets over the past week, so instead the girl took a pancake and slathered it indiscriminately in fruit, butter, and syrup, then started shoveling food into her mouth.

Pandy did the same, noting with some surprise that she might be feeling something she would have identified as hunger if she hadn’t been a little too dead for that. It wasn’t much, just a faint gnawing that might also be nerves, and it faded almost as soon as the first bite of pancake hit her innards, but Pandy still did something she probably should do more often anyway, and pulled up her status sheet.

Name: Pandy

Race: Human? (Deceased)

Age: 25

LF: 12/12

Mana: 563/929

Stats▾

Strength: 33 Intelligence: 43 Agility: 68 Pain Tolerance: 10 Charm: 3 Fire Affinity: 2 Dark Affinity: 2 Air Affinity: 1Skills▾

Hop: Lv. 25 (217/640) Bite: Lv. 25 (58/640) Scratch: Lv. 20 (24/190) Dance: Lv. 16 (1/73) Dual Wielding: Lv. 14 (7/55)Spells▾

Minor Heal: Lv. 27 (731/820) Wings of Glory: Lv. 11 (15/28) Verdant Surge: Lv. 1 (1/2) Vita Herbalis: Lv. 1 (0/2) Spark: Lv. 23 (82/460) Shifting Faces: Lv. 10 (10/19) Radiant Presence: Lv. 12 (6/37) Innate Magic: Lv. 23 (73/460) Shield of Darkness: Lv. 13 (42/46) Air of Superiority: Lv. 2 (2/3) Dark Restoration: Lv. 1 (1/2) Scorching Sonata: Lv. 4 (2/5)Boons▾

Ismara’s Blessing IIMark of KerosAglaea’s Kiss Faithful Foundation BarterCorruption Points: 422

As always, Pandy’s eyes went first to her Race, which, yes, definitely still said she was dead. Next she checked her Life Force, which had gone up by two this time. She’d been a little too busy to check when she was Performing Sneaky Acts, but she’d be willing to bet one of those had appeared after the elemental latched onto her in the carriage, and the second one sometime during the fight or flight portion of the evening. Well, early morning.

Her skills and stats looked right, and there were no new or upgraded boons, so she was just getting ready to really focus on her pancake when her fully-laden fork froze in front of her open mouth. Something else had changed: her age. She was one year older – twenty-five, rather than twenty-four. She had definitely been twenty-four yesterday, so today was her birthday. Her birthday was today.

According to the doctors who checked her over after the monks reported an abandoned infant on the monastery steps one chilly morning, Pandy had been no more than a week old, and might have been born slightly premature. She spent a week in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the hospital before being placed into a foster home while the police tried to track down her biological parents.

Failing that, she became a ward of the state, and she was told a few people even tried to adopt her, but quickly returned her like an online purchase that was Not As Described. There was no record of who they were or what their excuse had been, but Pandy assumed it was the human version of a Lemon Law. As Pandy got older, she was able to handle the fallout from her abysmal luck herself, but when she was small, it was the foster family’s responsibility, and everyone got tired of it sooner rather than later.

In any case, the date listed on Pandy’s very-uninformative birth certificate was November eighth. The months in Gacha Love were each twenty-eight days, and they had different names from the ones in Pandy’s original world, but if she thought about it… it was late July when she died, so technically her birthday was probably due any time now, though it still seemed a little early. She’d never really paid attention to the age on her stat sheet, assuming – if she bothered to think about it at all – that she would forever remain the age she was when she died. Apparently not.

But why had it changed today of all days? Was it tied to the VitalLink module? Was this what it had been building up to? Would she get another year older every time she gained a dozen Life Force? Did Life Force count as months in her undeath? And if the module had finally done something different, why hadn’t Keros mentioned it?

The doors to the dining hall burst open, making Pandy jerk and stab herself in the lip with her sagging fork. Syrup and butter smeared across her chin, and Pandy barely remembered not to try to capture the errant deliciousness with her tongue. Ms. Davenport Did Not Approve of licking fingers or, in fact, Visible Tongue of any sort.

Snatching her napkin from her lap, Pandy covered her lip and chin, casting a Minor Heal as she did so. It healed her for one point of Life Force, and when she lowered the cloth napkin, she saw a single drop of blood on the white fabric. Stuffing it into her pocket, she turned to look at the group of people storming through the dining hall.

Unsurprisingly, the person in front was Dear Uncle Andres. No attempt to remove Augustus from being Thaniel and Lian’s guardian – in fact, if not name – could occur without someone else to take his place. The man looked no more appealing than he had the last time Pandy saw him. If anything, the triumphant curl of his lips made him even less likable.

Two men and a woman followed on his heels. One man was young and nervous-looking, wearing a suit that actually didn’t look like it had been tailored just for him. An older man strode beside the younger one, holding what looked for all the world like a briefcase. His expression was calm and detached, with no sign of Andres’ glee or the younger man’s tension. The woman came last, sailing along like a funeral barge down the Gangnam. Was that the right river? Was it a river at all? Pandy had a feeling it wasn’t, but at least no one in this world would ever know.

The three men plowed ahead until they reached the foot of the dais, at which point Dear Uncle Andres scowled, realizing he was going to be standing below Augustus during the ensuing confrontation. The woman, who wore all black from head to toe, stopped in the middle of the room, staring out over the mass of enthralled children. A veil covered the upper half of her face, while a separate piece of black lace trailed down from a remarkably dainty hat. Had she not heard about the Huge Hat Trend, or did she just have some rudimentary form of good taste?

Whichever it was, the veil hid her eyes, but Pandy could practically feel when the woman’s gaze landed on her. The woman raised a lacy black handkerchief to her mouth with a black lace-gloved hand and let out a deep, choked sob.

“Nathaniel! I’d know you anywhere! You’re the very image of my dear, departed brother,” she cried in a trembling voice.