Jackalope.
Antlered rabbits. Hare?
They were real, they were right in front of him. Big eared with a set of antlers to match, staring at him across the field with twitching noses.
"I-" He felt like he should say something in the face of absurdity. He felt this way yet the words would not leave his mouth. All that would, or even could, come out were "I, uh, huh?"
He couldn't have said it much better than that.
There were about ten of them, ten that he could see at least. They were all about three feet tall from tail to tip and of similar coloring, a dull gray with a darker fuzz across their antlers. Were they related? Did PanChema spill something in the water and mutate them?
Did he drink some of it?
One of the jackalopes, or maybe it was jackalope, started to thump its foot against the ground. One followed its example, then another, and another. Soon all of them were thumping the ground. A steady sound that shook the ground beneath Hiro's feet.
They weren’t running away. Animals usually run away when humans show up, especially prey animals. When they didn’t that usually meant…
Hiro slowly started to back away, feeling very stupid for leaving his car. More jackalope crept out of the tree line, noses twitching and eyes focused on him.
He picked his lips as the first took their first hops forward. ‘No sudden moves, no sudden moves.’ he told himself over and over again, taking a steady step back with every repetition. There was a chance that they would lose interest if there was some distance between them. That if the big human started to get on his way that they would too.
The jackalope still advanced. Faster now, more moving forward even as he retreated.
Hiro was not going to make it back to his car, not in time, not at the rate he was going. Still, he did not dare turn his back to them, that just seemed like a good way to get an antler to kidney. So, he stumbled his way into a backward run.
Which meant he had a front row view of six of the fifteen jackalopes starting their sprints after him. Between a hop and a lope they charged, eating up the field as they lowered their heads and jumped. Pointed and sharpened bone came rushing towards his face.
Hiro punched it.
A textbook jab, it felt sloppy but it did the job. The antlered rabbit bounced across the ground, tripping others as it came to a stop. That gave most of the others a pause, but not all of them.
“Ah!” Hiro gasped, pain lancing across his ankle as he was sideswiped by an antler. It failed to pierce his jeans but his cotton socks were no match.
He gave up his backward run and made a full sprint for his car. They gave chase, he could hear them racing along the grass. Closing in for a second pass.
They rammed his legs, little skulls knuckling into his thighs with all the force of a baseball bat. He stumbled but kept running, adrenaline letting him ignore the way a bit of antler broke off in his jean leg.
He bobbed out of the way of an obnoxiously high jump, more out of a fear fueled reflex than anything else, and knocked another out of the air. They were hot on his heels, as often ahead of him as behind. They weren’t doing it to cut him off or surround him, they simply caught up and sprung at him. Horned battering rams coming from all angles but he had yet to fall.
Hiro, once upon a time, was used to far better tactics and maneuvers. Though his foot wasn’t as sure as his memories. Or the rabbits’.
“Fuck.” He cursed, fumbling for his keys. They snagged as he was rammed again, nearly dropping them if not for a lucky save. “Fuck!” He cursed again, just so the universe knew how much he hated his current situation.
He slammed the door behind him, and another slam followed. He cursed a third time, starting his car and peeling away as fast as possible. Scraping and thuds sounded as he left, as did the dings from his phone. He swerved along the backroads, ignoring the honks as he raced for distance.
After a minute or so he pulled himself to the side of the road, jostling his wounds as he parked. He coughed out a shaky breath, flem and bile mixing at the back of his throat. He spat it out on his floor mats. He would be pissed about it later but, frankly, that was his future self’s problem. Current-him was having a bit of a panic attack.
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Hiro pressed his forehead against the steering wheel and tried to remind himself to take deep breaths. It worked, in a fashion. Instead of taking in long deep breaths he repeated a mantra of “What the fuck?” to himself. He said this over and over again until his heart stopped slimming into his ribcage.
“Okay.” He said, repeating it to reassure himself. “Okay. That happened. Jackalopes happened. Why did it happen?” He questioned the air but found the answer in his hand, in his phone. He remembered what the Admin said, what the quests had asked for.
Magic has returned.
Find altered animals.
Hiro looked at his phone, at the notifications of
“What the fuck?”
-0-0-0-0-0-
Hiro did not make it to George Mason that day. Instead, he drove back to his apartment and started to pace.
It had taken a while, longer than Hiro would care to admit, but he had finally calmed himself down. A combination of deep breathing and cursing did him wonders. Enough that he could pay more than a passing glance to his injuries.
Every other step he took earned him a little wince. Fresh lines of red pain traced his ankles, dyeing his white socks pink as they oozed. His thighs and abdomen were bruising while his shin was about as marked up as his ankles, maybe more. All thanks to the velvety snag of bone in his hand. Hiro had to dig it out of his pants leg where one of the… jackalope's antlers got stuck in the material.
Small, curved, and distressingly sharp the snip of antler held his attention. It was proof that something was going on, a kick in the face of reality. Though Hiro wasn't quite ready to jump on the 'magic is real' bandwagon just yet he was starting to consider it.
He licked up his phone and read the notifications again.
[Due to repeated action you have Generated 2 new skills!]
[You have generated the Skill: Running]
[You have generated the Skill: Striking]
They searched his digital footprint? They could do that? He knew the App was invasive but damn. Not that finding out he used to box was anything more special than a Facebook dive. Still, what the words implied stuck with him.
A lot of the things the App implied or outright said were sticking with him. Especially when he was A) shocked enough to consider it seriously and B) calmed enough to do it properly.
Hiro might not have gotten his Bachelors but he had gone to college. And all those legal classes let him make all kinds of jumps and impressions. Able to take the wording he remembered, and reread, from the App to hopefully gain a fuller picture.
Magic was supposedly back and it was changing things, mutating regular animals into urban legends. And it was such a widespread event that someone, a Champion, was needed in every country. Because the world was changing too much, too fast, leaving everything and everyone in danger.
Because if magic could turn rabbits into aggressive jackalopes then…
Hiro rolled the bit of antler between his fingers, ignoring the twisting feeling in his gut and the sensation in his chest that he was not so sure he liked. He brought it up to his eye, examing the little piece of impossibility. The proof of a statement that could not be more clear or more unbelievable.
What was he supposed to do now?
Tell someone? If not about the App then about the crazed Jackalope at the edge of town. Though he was fairly sure he knew how that would go. If he was not sent to the looney bin then he'd be mocked on daytime radio.
Who would he even tell? Who would believe him? Hiro did not have many friends anymore, post highschool diaspora and how he departed college saw to that. And his family, well, his mother was already treating him like glass and he did not want to give her any more excuses to do so.
He did not spare his coworkers more than a second thought.
So, what did he do?
He asked himself this a few times as he paced around his foldout futon. One turn gave him a particularly bad wince, and even a hiss, as he agitated his ankle again.
"I should probably take care of these." He muttered to himself, half limping to the only other room in his apartment.
Hiro lived in an old renovated house that was sectioned off into quarters, two apartments per floor. Hiro rented the smallest, and cheapest, of the four. It was little better than a studio, or even a dorm room, with a small kitchen area and even a full bathroom. A bathroom where he kept a small first aid kit under the sink.
Sitting at the lip of the tub he pulled out his bottle of peroxide and started to dab it onto his wounds. Having something to do helped, gave him a chance to step back and think.
He was almost, almost, sold on the idea of magic existing but he was not quite there. Something was going on, obviously, and someone was trying to do something about it. Or was giving the appearance of it, and going about it in a very weird and suspect way?
But who were they? How did they know? And how did Arthur fit in?
Hiro needed answers but had little in the way of clues. He needed leads, he needed to figure out what was going on.
The one route he tried to follow through Arthur led straight to a roadblock. One he was going to get around but he was delayed there all the same.
Barring that he saw only one other avenue. One other way to eke out those answers he desired.
He had to play the game the Champions Network wanted him to play.
He did not know the rules, he had no clue what the real goal was, he was not even sure how to play. But he would. He would do every quest, scroll through each thread, and even question the Admin themselves to get his answers.
… right after he was done cleaning himself up.