Betty gulped. The white-furred bunnygirl stood on the wings of the stage, about to perform a show-a real show, not some kids party or whatever-for the first time in her fledgling magic career. She was dressed in her pristine, brand-new costume that showed off her curvy figure in a very PG way. Betty was a family-friendly entertainer, after all. She wore a black suit jacket over a white shirt along with a red bow-tie, and a pair of black pants. A glittery top-hat sat on a crown of brown hair, with two long bunny ears sticking out to the sides. The real magician’s touch lay in the massive black and red cloak that trailed behind her. She had to say that she felt a little silly. She knew it was irrational. They were here to see magic after all; she ought to look the part. But the doubts were there, eating away at a self-confidence that could appear sky-high to strangers, but which in reality was always teetering on the verge of collapse.

“Ready?” asked her manager, a rather stressed looking goat named Simone. Well, manager was maybe a bit strong. Simone was really just a friend who was good at organising things, and who was happy to help set up a show like this for Betty as a side-gig. She was sensible and sharp, which in many ways made her the opposite of Betty. But she wasn’t immune to stress. Getting the show together so quickly, and with such pressure on the both of them, had left her looking more frazzled than usual, and now she was staring into Betty’s eyes with an alarming intensity. Betty nodded, smiling as well as she could for both of their sakes. OK, here we go, she thought to herself. You’re Betty the Breath-taking Bunny now. You own that stage, you will dazzle them all. You’re good at this. Relax and take deep breaths. There’s nothing you can’t do if you just-

“Go, go!” said the brown-furred goat, gesturing wildly. “Stop spacing out, get in the zone, and get on the stage!”

“O-ok!” stammered the petit little bunnygirl, grabbing hold of her top hat with two hands. “Let me just get my first trick ready!” She quickly yanked her hat downwards so that it covered her entire head, ears and all. Then she yanked it again, this time to the side, taking both hat and head clean off the shoulders and leaving a tuft of white fur sticking out of her collar. Simone gave her a thumbs up, then considered the usefulness of this gesture as the headless body sauntered on stage.

The crowd applauded and cheered when they saw a figure emerge from the side of the stage, but the noise soon died down into a low murmuring. Betty’s body waked unsteadily towards the centre of the stage, and seemed to turn left and right for a moment, before stopping. It seemed to stare at the crowd for a few long seconds. All was deathly silent. Then, the headless body shook the hat around, before reaching a hand in. Then it kept going, somehow going up past the elbow. When it came out, it was holding two long, white ears in its grasp.

The crowd sensed what was happening and gasped in appreciation, applauding. Betty teased the now inevitable reveal for a little bit, pulling at the ears until the tip of her head was visible and then sinking back down again, to a few laughs. But eventually, she gave her own head a good sharp tug, and out she came, dangling by her floppy bunny ears as her body held her up for the crowd to see. The assembled audience applauded with even more gusto at this, and Betty couldn’t help but grin a big stupid grin, feeling rather pleased with herself despite how odd she must have looked. She really was good at this! She was going to blow their minds, she just knew it. Tonight was her night.

When the clapping and cheering started to die down, Betty turned her back on the audience, placed her head back on her neck, held it there for a second or so, and then pulled her hands away. Her head wobbled slightly. Oh no. She tried to set it back in place, but it wouldn’t take. She must have been too quick with the Hat Trick backstage and messed up the magic. She panicked slightly, aware that the audience was watching her. Thinking quickly, Betty buttoned her collar up right-it was stiff enough to keep her head mostly in place. She would have to get something more secure though. Perhaps… ah, that would work out perfectly….

The white bunny turned around, a little stiffly, before addressing the audience.

“Greetings, greetings one and all. I am Betty, the Breath-taking Bunny, and I am here to delight, to dazzle, and to defy the rules of nature!”

The crowd applauded, filling the snow-white bunny with some confidence. Betty swished her cloak about in a way that surely looked very cool, trying to keep herself straight lest her head topple off. She reached a hand up and the crowd went quiet, anticipating another trick. The magician slowly moved her hand towards one of her large ears.

“How strange.” She announced in an exaggerated state whisper. “My hearing is rather off today. I wonder if I left something inside my ears again? Let’s have a look!”

Betty stuffed a hand inside, her face scrunching up as if she was reaching around in there. Which she was. The face was only partly for show-she knew she had a scarf hidden in there -somewhere-. But her furry little fingers couldn’t quite locate it. Where was it? She thought it was closer to the exit of her ears than this. Her arm went deeper, up to the elbow, as Betty stuck her tongue out and squinted harder. Her fingers wrapped around something, and she immediately pulled on it. This caused her head to wobble violently, and for a horrible moment it seemed as though it would fall off before it settled down again.

“Aha! I thought so!” she said, her hand emerging with her prize. “It’s a…a...ha..” Betty looked at what she was holding. It was pink, round and winkled, with a pink stem snaking down back into hear ears. She stared at it for a second, horrified. That was her brain! That was meant to stay in her head! Ideally!

Betty tore her eyes away from the organ in her hands and looked back at the audience. For some reason her eyes settled on an otter wearing a off-white hoodie in the front row, completely at random. The otter laughed at the sight in front of her, which set off a chain of similar, nervous laughter. It spread slowly through the crowd, and Betty took the opportunity to run with it.

“Woops! That’s not quite what I was looking for!” she said, slowly pushing her brain back in through her ears. This got another laugh, and Betty started to relax a bit. Once everything was back in its proper place, she felt the cotton of the scarf and pulled on it, slower this time in case she upset her head from its resting place again. It came out in a colourful flash, its rainbow hues looking rather splendid on such a nice day. She held it aloft, and the crowd applauded once more. Betty tied it around her neck, and hoped that it would stop any more hassle from her wayward head. Although she didn’t risk bowing and testing it out.

“Thank you, thank you! You’re all in fine form tonight!” said the lagomorph as the clapping died down again. “But these have just been little warm ups. Now the real magic begins. Behold!” She gestured to the side, where a team of silent stagehands wheeled in a circular board, with straps for arms and legs on the flat surface. Alongside it was a tray on wheels with six very large, very sharp daggers on it. Betty moved towards it, silently nodding at the stagehands as they departed as quickly as they’d appeared.

“I believe you’re all familiar with this sort of trick.” Said the bunnygirl, picking up one of the daggers and gently feeling the point with the tip of her finger. “Someone gets strapped into the wheel and then someone else throws daggers at them. But have you ever seen this trick performed with only one person?” she asked rhetorically. “Well, you will now, as Betty the Breath-Taking Bunny will throw the daggers at her own personage, using only the power of magic!”

Betty started to strap herself in, then stopped. She had planned on using the scarf around her neck as a blindfold. Since said scarf was currently doing a fine job of holding her head on, that obviously wasn’t happening. Luckily, Betty had a solution to this problem. She reached a hand back into her head, again through her ear. “OK, watch for the brain this time, girl” she said to herself under her breath, before finding her target: A length of string. Withdrawing her hand, she then folded her ears down across her eyes, and then tied them down with the string, which effectively left her blindfolded.

Even in her blinded state, strapping herself into the wheel was still easy -she had practiced it often enough in the week building up to this. First her legs, which she did by hand, and then the right arm. For the left arm she waved a hand and, using a little bit of simple magic, bound her wrist in tight. She was now fully strapped into the wheel, which started to turn very slowly clockwise.

“Now, watch, as the deadly daggers awaken!”

There were gasps from the audience as the daggers, true to the word of the now bound bunny, started to move seemingly of their own accord. As she turned on her circle, Betty realised that she was now upside down, and that her head was start to slip down off of her neck. If it hadn’t been for the scarf she had tied around her neck then her fuzzy head would have been bouncing along the wooden stage for sure. For now she felt it slip down a little, but it stayed anchored in place.

Meanwhile, the steel daggers hung in mid-air, gleaming in the sun. As she completed her first rotation, Betty summoned one of the daggers towards her. It flew through the air and landed with a satisfying thud into the wood just to the right of her head. The crowd reacted with excitement and even some applause, but there were still five daggers to go.

Upside down again, Betty concentrated hard as she calculated the angles mentally. It was all about timing really, and knowing where she was in relation to the daggers. And a little suspense was of course never unwelcome, making the audience think she was struggling. Which she wasn’t, of course, even if her head felt really weird and she really wanted to scratch her ears. When she felt another rotation, another dagger whooshed through the air and sunk into the wood, on the opposite side of her head than the last dagger. Louder applause followed. If she could see, Betty would have spotted more than a few anxious faces.

Betty stretched out the next two daggers with great care, until the tension in the air was almost palpable. The fourth one grazed the side of her jacket as it landed next to it. This trick was going better than the aspiring magician had ever dreamed it would. She had the crowd in the palm of her hands. With two daggers left, she decided to go the extra mile. When she felt ready, both daggers came at her at once, almost singing through the air such was the sharpness of their blades. She felt the dual thuds of the metal into the wood, and the crowd gasped and went silent. Betty thought this rather odd -they should be cheering, surely?

Using her magic, Betty untied the string holding her ears down and blinked as they sprang back into their natural position. She wanted to turn and inspect the daggers, but turning her head was rather difficult with her neck’s current condition, so she undid the straps first, once again using her magic, and hopped to her feet. The crowd gasped again, and there were two soft thumps, which put an icy feeling in the bottom of Betty’s stomach. She went to raise her arms as a sign for applause, but found that she couldn’t. She turned around and inspected the wheel. Her arms were sitting right there at the base of the wheel, cut clean off at the shoulder.

It was a good thing Betty’s fur was so white, because otherwise everyone watching would have seen her turn deathly pale. “I messed up!” she thought to herself. “The blade must have been so sharp that I didn’t even feel the cut!” she took a deep breath as the crowd started to murmur. She couldn’t lose them, not now. Sure she could stick her arms back on now, but that would be tantamount to admitting that she had just made a meal of the trick. And what if she struggled to get them on like her head? No, it would be a disaster. She turned back around again and started to improvise.

“W-Well! You may all be thinking that the Brilliant, Breath-Taking Betty has made some sort of error. But this is… er, this is all part of the plan!” she said, smiling manically as she tried desperately to convince all watching of her words. She shook her shoulders to get some cape action going-all magicians look more in command when they have a cape fluttering behind them, it was stage-magic 101. “Having arms is too easy, so I deliberately got rid of them! A true magician needs only two things: Her magic and her audience. Now, onto the next trick!”

Against all odds, this seemed to actually work, and the crowd broke into applause. Betty’s heart was pounding by the end of her mini-speech, and she could feel droplets of sweat forming. The now armless (and technically decapitated) bunny felt like she was desperately trying to surf the crest of a wave out of her control, but by god, she hadn’t fallen off the board yet. It was onto the next trick.

“Stagehands, I am in need of you more than ever now!” she said, which drew a laugh at least. The reliable workers brought out two boxes that were clearly designed for someone taller than Betty, and laid them on opposite ends of the stage. Betty walked over to the one nearest her, on the right. She went to open the door and realized that her arms were still sitting on the stage by the wheel, and so she had to use her mouth to swing the door open.

“These are two perfectly normal, ordinary boxes.” Said the bunny. “I am opening them to show you that there is no trick, no mechanism inside, no hidden trapdoors.” She repeated the process with the other box, then turned to address the audience again.

“Ladies and Gentleman, I will now perform the feat of teleportation! I will step into this box, and with but a word I will exit through the other!”

The bunnygirl stepped inside, and closed the door. There was a dramatic drum roll as she waited to perform the spell. It was a little more complex than her usual simple prestidigitation tricks, but she was confident that she could pull it off… but then again, she had managed to sever two limbs and a head. Maybe she should-no, that wasn’t how a real performer should think. She had this. She could do this.

“Alaka-ZAM!”

There was a flash, making Betty blink from inside her box. Immediately something felt wrong. There was the sound of one of the doors opening, and then what sounded laughter. Curious, Betty went to launch herself forward, but found that she was rather unequipped for movement, and ended up simply falling face first out of the box. The collision was too much for her poor neck, and her head rolled away from her body onto the stage.

If she was mortified by this development, Betty’s horror only grew at what she saw when her head finally came to a stop. Her entire bottom half, from her bare, padded feet up to her waist, was running around the stage like a headless chicken. This would have been bad enough had her legs not then tripped over her fallen head, crashing to the floor with an undignified thud. The audience was now uproarious with their laughter. Betty closed her eyes in shame. This was a disaster… but she had to finish. Running away now would finish her. She had her pride. One fluffed trick was nothing. She still had one more chance to send them home wowed.

“Enough games!” she said to the still laughing crowd. “You laugh now, but this was all planned! I shall now reassemble myself with my greatest trick yet! Stagehands!” she yelled above the din. “Bring in…the final prop!”

A far larger box was promptly wheeled onto the centre of the stage by the two stagehands, who remained totally professional in spite of the strange sights around them. It looked like lots of smaller boxes fused into one big one, with fifteen or so small squares stacked on top of each other into a rough T-shape, although right now it was all just one big empty space-the compartments came into play during the magical part of the trick. Without needing to be told, the stagehands gathered up the scattered bunny parts, and placed them all in the box in an appropriate order. Betty made a mental note to personally thank the two canine helpers when she was finished.

“This box, as you can see, is a very special box” said Betty’s head, balancing precariously on her neck once more. “Each segment can be moved around at will. At my command, I shall rearrange my entire body before your very eyes, and then reform myself into one, breath-taking piece!”
Without waiting for effect this time, Betty slammed the door shut and began to rearrange the box. Individual compartments containing feet, hands, legs, arms, her head, and other parts began to shift positions seamlessly. Occasionally one segment’s door would open to reveal part of a limb-an elbow there, a hand there, and so on. The crowd had stopped laughing and began taking things seriously again, which Betty was taking as a victory at this point. If she could exit to applause and not laughter, she would be a happy bunny.

“And now, cease!” she cried, the box containing her head lying open around where her waist usually was. Everything was now on show for the curious audience, with a foot where her head should have been, her chest beneath that supported by her own head…it was a finely-balanced tower of body parts. She was completely mixed up, and nothing seemed to have gone wrong this time. For a brief moment, Betty the Breath-taking Bunny exalted in a job well done. All she had to do now was-

Suddenly, the entire T-shaped box shook, and a stray foot leapt out, followed by a wayward knee. Her legs were still trying to run around, despite now being in several pieces. This was unfortunate given that the box, once back in its normal T-shape, needed every part to stay in its place, or else the whole tower would come tumbling down. And, with a slow rumbling inevitability, it promptly did so. Betty felt her head getting buried under a pile of her own body, a shower that was capped off with her own foot bouncing off of her head and onto the floor next to it. She looked at it resentfully. “So much for good luck” she thought to herself.

The forlorn head looked up at the audience, who were busy laughing their heads off at Betty’s attempts at magic. She put on a brave face and thanked them all for coming, hoping and praying that the curtains would close and end her misery. But she was to suffer one final indignity. The stagehands from before emerged with brooms, and began to sweep her parts off stage into the back. Betty didn’t even have time to protest before she got a face-full of broom, and she was swept away from the limelight.

When Betty's parts were finally all safely backstage, and she realised the show was over, it all sunk in, and Betty the Breath-taking Bunny Magician immediately broke down in tears.

“Oh, I was awful! I stink at magic!” she wailed to the watching backstage staff. Simone quickly walked over and picked up the crying bunnyhead, cradling it in her arms.

“Betty, honey, what are you talking about?” asked the goat, who looked a lot less stressed now that the show was over. This fact, and the nature of her question, made Betty pause.

“I…I was terrible, that’s what I’m talking about!” she said. “I’ll never get asked to do a show as big as this again!” Simone shook her head and laughed.

“Betty you simpleton, did you not -see- that audience at the end? Or hear them? They were roaring with laughter! They loved you!” Betty
considered this. They did seem to spend most of that show either applauding or laughing.

“B-but, I kept messing up!” she continued anyway. Simone shrugged.

“You wanted to entertain them, and you did. And if they hear you were to perform again, they’ll all be back, trust me. You did good, Betty.”
The bunny head sniffed a little, feeling much better. It hadn’t been the show that she wanted to put on, but if they all went home happy then so what? She looked down and spotted the foot she had been chastising not moments ago. She silent apologized to the detached appendage-she would get it a foot massage as an apology. Then she looked up at her manager and smiled.

“Thanks, Simone. Sorry for crying. Sometimes I just…you know…go to piec-“

“Don’t”

“Sorry, ma’am.”


==============================================================================================

Cover lineart generously provided by the wonderful  Airship-King , and colouring by the also great  novaspark !