Cocoa the Rabbit

Appearance: Cocoa is a rabbit with speckled brown fur of varying shades, mostly consisting of a chocolate brown, but with a noticeable light brown patch around one of her eyes. Unlike Cream, Cocoa’s ears are always pointed upwards and are much stiffer, meaning she cannot use them to hover. Her fur is thick and fluffy, and her hair naturally bunches into curls. She is short and petite, always needing to tilt her head up a bit to look Cream in the eyes, even as an adult. As a child, she wore blue dresses to contrast her fur, but as she aged she began to prefer wearing black. As an adult, her main comfort outfit is an oversized black sweater, but she still retains blue formalwear for special occasions. She finds herself uncomfortable in traditionally feminine footwear, preferring sneakers even in inappropriate situations.

Personality: From the young age of four, Cocoa proved herself highly intelligent and creatively driven. She aced classes at school, mostly consisting of math, history, and socials, and managed to graduate early. Despite this, she cared very little for school, and focused all of her mental energy into drawing, something she would improve as she aged, and being one of the few things she would remain enthusiastic about throughout her life. Cocoa also suffers from near crippling anxiety issues, mostly struggling with simply talking to new people. She began to become more confident with speaking after Cream and her began dating, but her fear of crowded and enclosed spaces would never fully fade. As a kid, these anxiety issues had other kids label her as a crybaby, and when pushed into a corner she would react in erratic, violent ways. She grew out of this behaviour eventually, but it took her well into her teens. She would be diagnosed with autism and borderline personality disorder multiple times throughout her life, and takes medication to help with her mental issues. Cocoa is noticeably frail, having very little physical body strength, but she was eventually able to be convinced to go on runs thanks to Cream. Fittingly enough, Cocoa’s favourite snacks tend to be chocolates, but she mostly enjoys coffee, and, strangely enough, would eat coffee beans raw when she was a child. She has a close relationship with her mother, and will oftentimes “regress” to a more childlike state of mind when around her. Despite her timid tendencies, Cocoa finds herself connecting with action focused media, and a particular affection for edgy, brooding types, a love that wouldn’t leave her even after Cream and her began dating. She also suffers from bizarre nightmares which she can never recall, and often result in her needing to be calmed down, by her mother when she was a child, and by Cream as an adult.

History: Cocoa is the only daughter of Chocolate the Rabbit, coincidentally an old school friend of Vanilla the Rabbit. Her father is unknown, but Chocolate guesses it was from a one off fling, as she is unmarried and dated a lot of men. Cocoa was a strange child, she was an outcast in schools for many years, and tended to get into trouble easily when unsupervised, mostly odd “escape attempts” which never made it that far. Chocolate was the only person Cocoa ever felt comfortable around for years, but her mother eventually grew worried about her antisocial tendencies, odd drawings, and complete indifference to making friends. This would bring Chocolate back into contact with Vanilla, and introduce Cocoa to Cream the Rabbit.

Cocoa and Cream became close friends very quickly as Chocolate and Vanilla set up weekly playdates for the two. This relationship would blossom for years, helping Cocoa come out of her shell, but never fully “fixing” her. As Cocoa entered her adolescence, Chocolate had to work more to provide for the both of them, meaning that Cocoa and Cream would only meet up every few months. The two remained connected through the internet, which took Cocoa a while to get used to. During this time, Cocoa began to focus on her passion for art, taking an idea from her childhood of an alien robot hero and beginning to flesh it out into a full story. As she was barely even a teenager at this point, this resulted in many embarrassing drawings shipping herself with her original character, all of which were posted online.

After graduating from high school, Cocoa avoided higher forms of education, instead focusing on various part time jobs and art commissions to help support Chocolate and her. It began to wear her down over the years, resulting in a period of extreme depression, only mitigated by her contact with Cream, which had slowly begun to become more intimate. After Cream graduated from college, the two began to meet up in person more often, and during one fateful night, realized that they loved each other. Their relationship blossomed, and the two eventually moved into an apartment with each other. Cream would push Cocoa into making a graphic novel based on her childhood ideas.

The two built a narrative based on Cocoa’s old drawings, most of which Cocoa admitted to having no memory of ever drawing, and eventually the ideas came together. Her novel, “Night Eclipse”, would be about an alien robot superhero named Eclipse, who landed on the planet, and was used by the government to create weapons. He would escape, battle those who wanted him captured, form bonds with the people he met, and eventually save the world from his alien creators. Cream would help with writing, basing parts of the story off of memories of a friend from her childhood.

The novel became a hit, praised for powerful character writing and excellent art, with it managing to win an award for “best debut”. During the acceptance, Cocoa would pass out from stage fright and need to be brought backstage by Cream. Half the profits of the book would be sent directly to Cocoa’s mother, helping her retire, while also giving Cocoa and Cream the money to live worry-free together. The two are working on a follow up involving time travel and Eclipse’s evil twin, Azoth.

Throughout her life, when Cocoa was alone, a small voice in her head would tell her that something was wrong, and that it needed to be fixed. The voice would get smaller over time, until it vanished completely. Cocoa was with someone she loved now, happier than she had ever been. Why would she ever want to change that?

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Count the Sheep

Appearance: Count is a sheep with light grey wool covering her body. Her hair is an unkempt, large, fluffy cloud of wool that reaches to the ground and drags along behind her, There is usually objects stuck inside the wool, as she uses it for storage. She is rather short, making it so most people need to look down at her, and she is a little chubby. She can usually be found wearing an oversized orange sleeping robe, decorated with little grey clouds, which usually conceals any other clothing. Underneath it, she wears soft white slippers and mittens made of wool. Her face is always visibly tired, her green eyes always half closed, and a small perpetual frown.

Personality: As expected from someone who looks like they're always about to pass out, Count is constantly tired. She's tired from lack of sleep, she's tired from too much sleep, she's tired of talking to people, and she's tired of people trying to break into her house. She is extremely protective of the Pumpkin Mansion and everything inside of it, as she has apparently lived in it for an extremely long time. She is most protective of her collection of plush toys, her favorite type being birds (she thinks they look dumb), and she always carries some of her favorites in her wool. She protects the mansion with strange powers that let her fling objects and other people around, which even she can't explain (or maybe she just doesn't want to bother explaining?). She has a disdain for most people, especially those that steal, ask her questions, and act like loudmouthed jerks. She will not be mean to children, however. Her favorite food is anything made of mostly sugar, including lollipops, gumdrops, hard candy, and her absolute favorite, cotton candy. Like her stuffed toys, she usually carries some candy around with her at all times, stored haphazardly in her wool. She often falls asleep while eating candy. The only times Count ever leaves Pumpkin Mansion are to make runs for more candy. She refuses to explain how she survives off of only candy. She also dislikes technology and anything that puts out artificial light, preferring candlelit ambience.

History: According to herself, Count has been living in Pumpkin Mansion for several hundred years, but her youthful appearance suggests otherwise. The mansion has always been said to be haunted, but reports of anything similar to Count have never been recorded prior to recent history. The history of the mansion, along with her mysterious nature, has unfortunately made her a hot topic for reporters, internet personalities, and particularly brave children, turning her into something of an urban legend-adjacent celebrity in the surrounding area.

Some theories suggest she's the reason the mansion's legendary vault of treasures has never been cracked, with Count being the mansion's guardian spirit. Others say she's simply a strange teenager who decided to take residence in the mansion for personal reasons. Regardless of why she lives in Pumpkin Mansion, she quickly made it her home shortly after her first sighting, being seen often afterwards. The intrigue of the public has pushed her further into seclusion, the culmination of this being an infamous livestream from influencer ShinePanther, where Count's mood was pushed to its limits and she attacked and nearly killed the influencer and their assistant.

The most interesting event caught by ShinePanther, and why the livestream went on for so long, was that they managed to catch Count sleepwalking. During this, the camera recorded Count attempting and failing to open the treasure vault, mumble nonsense to her plush toys, and most bizarrely, attempt to jump off the roof of the mansion. ShinePanther's assistant saved Count, but this ultimately resulted in ShinePanther and the assistant being thrown from the roof by her.