TWENTY-FOUR: Rabbit

Rabbit

It was late when Alden teleported back home. To his surprise, Boe was hanging out on the sofa using Alden’s laptop like it was community property.

“Do you just live here now or something?” Alden tossed him a bag of banana chips. “You’ll note from the price sticker that these cost less than fifteen dollars.”

He’d wanted to get a fresh banana, but it was against customs regulations.

“You spend the day in hero land, and all I get is,”—Boe adjusted his glasses and checked the tag—“a seven dollar snack size bag of freeze-dried fruit. That’s robbery. You’re making my point for me. You’re going to starve to death.”

Alden was tired and drained, but he had actually been anticipating this moment for the past couple of hours while he sat waiting for his teleport time slot in the departures lounge.

“I might,” he agreed, trying to sound casual as he kicked off his shoes. “Only got five million for Chainer. Hey, where’s Aunt Connie?”

“She went out for drinks with some friends…” Boe’s fingers froze on the keyboard. “Wait. Run that sentence past me again.”

Alden grinned. “I said, ‘Hey, where’s Aunt Connie?’”

Boe flung the banana chips at him. “You’re not serious?!”

“I seriously wanted to know where she was. She’s my aunt. I do love her, you—”

“You jerk! We have to call Jeremy. How did you already get paid? Did you just go to the Velra mansion and knock? And how did you get five million, you total pushover? You were there for a funeral!”

“Hey, don’t throw my laptop around like that!”

“You can buy yourself another one with all of your newfound wealth.” Boe was reaching for his phone. “Rabbit? Or did you chicken out and ask for Adjuster in the end?”

“Rabbit,” Alden said, checking his computer for damage. “It was a long day. The funeral went well. As well as a funeral can go. It still feels strange to say goodbye to her when nobody even knows what happened. As for how everything else went down…the Velras are batshit.”

Boe eyeballed him. “Did you already affix? You don’t look like you did.”

Alden snorted and flopped onto the sofa. It felt good to be home. “You think it would show? With Rabbit?”

Boe shrugged. “A little maybe. Jeremy’s not picking up.”

“I didn’t affix. I was worried the security scanner at the teleport place might be able to tell. I’ll do it in the morning when I’m rested. And I need to freshen up my knowledge of all things Rabbit before I have to make final decisions.”

“That’s what I was doing on your computer. Since you know your skill choice, the big thing will be your trait selection. I’ve never paid much attention to that before since it’s Rabbit, but it’s a good feature. Kind of like getting to choose your own class subtype. I think…”

Alden listened while Boe rambled on.

Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow is the real start of it all.

 

---

 

Jeremy woke the entire house up on Sunday morning by banging on the front door at six AM.

“I was afraid you were going to affix it without me,” he whispered, while Boe flipped him off with both middle fingers.

Alden apologized to his slightly hungover aunt, told her she could go back to sleep, and sent Jeremy to fetch breakfast as punishment.

“This is probably the only time in my whole life I’ll ever get to see anyone become an Avowed,” Jeremy said in a pitiful voice as Alden shoved him back out the door.

“I’m not going to do it without you. I’m not even fully conscious yet. Plus there won’t be anything amazing for you to see.”

At least he didn’t think there would be. Some people fainted, but even if Alden was one of them, it wouldn’t be much to look at.

An hour later, they were all eating convenience store snacks together in the floor of Alden’s bedroom, trying to talk quietly about trait selection so that they wouldn’t wake up Connie.

“We should just do this at the consulate,” Boe said finally. “I can’t argue properly with a volume limit. And Skiff shouldn’t be spying anymore, right?”

“Definitely not if he worked for the Velras. Probably not if he didn’t. My listing for Chainer would have disappeared when I traded the class.”

“I can’t believe you two escaped from a superhero without me.”

“We quietly walked past him, Jeremy. It was no big deal,” Alden said.

“Well yeah…if you’re comparing it to getting stolen away in broad daylight by a gorgeous chick in a sports car.”

“She was stressful. And forty-something.”

“I looked her up online. I think you’ve got to be wrong about that.”

“Completely monopolizing a Healer to give your family eternal youth is fairytale villain stuff,” Boe said. “Gotta respect it.”

They continued the conversation on their way to the consulate, where Gorgon let them in even though it wasn’t yet officially open.

Alden ran straight to the desk. “I got Rabbit!” he said excitedly. “I’m going to affix it this morning.”

“I see,” Gorgon said, not looking away from his monitors. “You may use the basement if you wish. We will be open to the public soon, and making adjustments to your class during affixation can take some time.”

“I know you can’t say anything encouraging, but I can sense your enthusiasm buried deep, deep down.”

I hope. A tiny part of Alden was still paranoid that the luggage thing was a coincidence. And right after he affixed, Gorgon was going to say something like, “You moron. Why would I ever suggest a loser class like Rabbit?”

That’s not what’s going to happen. It’ll be fine. There will be something about the luggage skill that makes it good.

They took the elevator down to the hall of beige-ness.

“Awesome!” Jeremy said, racing toward the first door and jostling the handle. “Aww…this one’s locked.”

He went to the next and tried to turn its handle, too.

“Yes, keep doing that. I’ve always wanted to be killed by some eldritch abomination the Artonans are keeping hidden away underground,” Boe said.

“I think if he manages to open one it’s more likely to be a storage closet. Or a conference room.”

“This one’s open!” Jeremy shouted.

“That’s because it’s the one we’re allowed to use,” Alden told him.

“Wow. Were you planning to move in down here?” Jeremy stepped over the rumpled sleeping bag and water bottles.

“Yeah, I was. I thought I’d have to trade 24/7 for the next few months to get something good. But…the Velras happened.”

Boe was fondling the cloudy crystal table. “I wonder what this thing is made of.”

“Magic stuff.”

Alden frowned, remembering something. “I told B74 I’d come back. I did mean to. That asshole is going to think I’m an even bigger asshole.”

“If he doesn’t like the taste of it, he shouldn’t serve it to other people,” said Boe.

Jeremy took the folding chair, so after a moment’s consideration, Alden hopped up to sit on the edge of the trading table.

“Are you going to do it now?” Jeremy asked eagerly.

Boe shot him a look. “Stop asking that every twelve seconds. He might have a few reservations about signing his life away, you know.”

“Why would he? Your choices are saying ‘yes’ to the contract and getting a thank-you prize. Or saying ‘no’ and getting squat. You become a superhuman either way.”

Jeremy was right. The only reason anyone would reject the contract was out of deeply held anti-Artonan beliefs or because they were scared of being summoned. It wasn’t an official policy, but it was widely known that the aliens deprioritized people who refused to agree, even if they wouldn’t outright delete them from their list of potential summonses.

They preferred to use willing helpers before they resorted to angry or petrified ones.

“I’m good to go,” Alden said. “I think. I just need to say yes. Pick the skill. See what traits are offered with it. Become amazing.”

Boe snorted. “Become a bunny you mean.”

“I’m going to use my new luggage carrying powers against you.”

“…I’m sure that sounded more threatening in your head.”

“You can use your powers on me!” Jeremy volunteered.

“Thank you, Jeremy. You’re my favorite friend.” He took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

He opened up the System’s acceptance page. There was an option to listen to the selection speech again, and his finger hovered over it. But he knew that was only anxiety. He’d nearly memorized it when he was a kid. There were no secrets hidden in the words.

 

[Pre-affixed Selectee: Samuel Alden Thorn]

[Divergence Rank: B]

[Assigned Class: Rabbit]

 

…

 

[Samuel Alden Thorn, do you willingly accept your duties as one of Earth’s Avowed, thereby satisfying a portion of your planet’s debt to Artona?]

 

[YES/NO]

2091 h: 23 m: 11 s

 

“I would like to accept the Interdimensional Warriors Contract.”

He spoke in a deliberately steady voice. It felt like an occasion where you should say it out loud instead of just clicking.

“Oh, shit. He’s really doing it,” Jeremy whispered, staring at Alden with huge eyes.

“Let him focus.”

The acceptance page disappeared.

“Welcome, Alden,” the System murmured in his ear. “And thank you for your future service. Please take your time refining your choices for class-specific options. You have two thousand ninety-one hours before they will be randomly affixed.”

“It’s done,” Alden said.

Before he could add anything else, six new points of light appeared in front of his eyes and bloomed into option panes.

 

 

“My palms are literally sweating. Isn’t that stupid?” Alden dried them on his jeans. He hesitated for a second, then selected FOUNDATION.

He already knew what it should look like, since the stat bonuses for every class and rank, except the uniques, were standardized. But he still wanted to see it.

Foundation was divided into two subcategories. One called Foundational Enhancements and one called Class Effects. Alden chose the first, and scanned through it.

It’s totally normal. He’d wondered if giving his blood to Gorgon might have some effect on his stats…but if it did, it wasn’t reflected here. Makes sense I guess. The System’s only listing the things it will add itself.

It didn’t even list whatever Alden’s base stats as a fairly-average human teenager were. It just started from zero.

 

Alden sighed. “That full point being automatically applied to Appeal instead of something else really rubs the wrong way.”

Rabbits were the only class that had a starting bonus in that category. Probably because the Artonans expected to have to deal with them more often and in more social settings.

“Tons of places require a full point or more in it for hero work anyway,” said Jeremy.

“I know. Everyone wants their hero team to be friendly and photogenic. But still…”

The stats listed here were just the tip of a vast and complicated iceberg. The System tried to simplify things for people who didn’t want to get double Ph. D’s in the human body and the magical mutation of it.

Any point added to one of these top-level stats was actually being divided and applied to all the various physical and mental components that formed that quality. If Alden selected Appeal and dug down into the sub-stat menus, he knew he’d find that the point was affecting all kinds of different things, from his facial symmetry to his ability to empathize with others.

As part of the 1963 Agreement, the Artonans weren’t allowed to force psychological adjustments on humans through the System, though. So prior to affixing the point, Alden could delete the percentage of it that would make him better at playing well with others.

But doing that, especially with a single point, was a bad look for someone who wanted to go the hero route.

Next, he selected Class Information.

 

“No surprises,” Alden noted as he finished reading through it. “The summons response time is like something from a comedy.”

Other classes usually had multiple hours or even days notice before they were summoned for non-emergencies. Forty-eight seconds was barely long enough to put clothes on if you got summoned in the middle of a shower.

Under Privileges, he found his signing gift. He was allowed to choose among three options: three stat points to spend in foundation, a tool called The Fragile Atmosphere, and the Rabbit class spell Wardrobe Change.

The Fragile Atmosphere was offered as a signing bonus to almost every class. It was a single-use life support device that would give you around six minutes of Earth air, gravity, and atmospheric pressure. It was a great “oh shit” button in all kinds of situations, but single-use was hard to swallow.

Wardrobe Change was slightly better than it sounded. It was a short spell that would let you quickly swap between various pieces of gear you had purchased from the Wardrobe all Rabbits had access to. But the stat bonuses on Rabbit gear were so small they were almost decorative.

“The foundation stat bonuses will be the best,” Alden said.

“Don’t just assume that. You haven’t even read the detailed description for your skill yet.”

“I know, Boe. I’m doing it.”

Moment of truth. Alden selected SKILLS, bit his lower lip, and scrolled through the seemingly endless options toward the L’s.

There was a chance—a very slim one—that Let Me Take Your Luggage wouldn’t be there. The System made adjustments all the time. And it sometimes limited the number of people who had certain skills or spells by deleting them from the list of available options when it had met its quota.

But it was there. Right between two equally mysterious options.