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Chapter Text

There’s a curious sound when a blade strikes flesh: a squelch, like a spot of mud beneath a shoe. The Mad Donkey reacts much the way the puppets do when their circuits crackle and crunch beneath a well-timed strike. He hisses instead of clicks, and he grunts instead of making an odd mechanical growl, but it’s similar enough.

But that squelching thud sets something ticking in the clockwork of P’s chest.

P pulls back from a flurry of attacks to roll the gears in his shoulder and tighten his hold of his rapier. His springs are weary, and the Mad Donkey landed a well-timed hit to his side when he was too slow to dodge.

This is when he sees the next curiosity of his foe: he breathes. Heavily. His chest rises and falls and rises again, and every breath comes accompanied with a hearty, wet wheeze through the teeth of his mask. P breathes, too; slight whispers of air between gears and pumps releasing pressure, but he never loses his breath and gulps the way the Mad Donkey is now.

The Mad Donkey drags his sword across the cobbles with a grating snarl of metal-on-stone. P slices his rapier across the grindstone on his elbow.

“I’ll kill you both, then string you up on the bridge!” the Mad Donkey bellows, and charges.

P dodges his first blow, then fires his puppet string directly into the man’s shoulder. He plants his feet as the Mad Donkey jerks into him. He coils and uncoils, letting loose a storm of strikes. The final one sends the Mad Donkey to his knee; and without hesitation, P follows, springs gathering momentum as he pulls his arm back and releases it into the man’s chest.

His rapier squelches clear through him. Red sprays from the wound. The Mad Donkey gurgles. P yanks and twists his blade free. It lets out another burst. The Mad Donkey falls with a soft thud to the bridge.

“I demanded the truth… now I feel bad for my comrades,” he grits out, hand pressed to the dark spot spreading rapidly across his coat.

P’s eyes drag from him to the wet blood across his hands. The oil of a puppet is black and slippery; this… blood, his circuits supply, this… it sticks and clings to the old fabric of his dark blue sleeves. It turns them a different color. It darkens them.

He tilts his head. What a smell, too: burning oil and ozone, electricity and smoke, this is what a kill smells like. They’re similar in their sharp, metallic tang, but that is where the similarities end. There is something sickeningly organic about the scent of the Mad Donkey’s blood on his hands.

The red is the most vivid color he has ever seen. It is brighter than the red of the Parade Master’s corroded crimson arms. It is glossier than the dark stains that litter the streets. Those could have been blood as much as oil; this can be only what it is.

And the Mad Donkey’s body lies in one piece. No segments have exploded off, or springs broken and burst. P distinctly remembers aiming a throwing cell at the man’s matted mask, but his flesh absorbed its electricity with merely a dry, uneven cry.

Blood coats his hand. He turns it over. It’s a curious heat, one that comes from the red dashed across his skin and not the inner whirlings of his gears. It is already drying on his skin. Mere seconds ago, it was pulsing through the Mad Donkey’s veins like Ergo did in P’s.

There is a buzz in his ears. It’s not mechanical, it’s like whispers all webbing together, like spores in the air caught in the cogs of his brain.

Wake up, it whispers.

“Son.”

That voice. It sends electricity through the springs of his chest. He has heard it before. He has heard it somewhere. It makes him ache like something is broken in him.

Something in his face twitches.

The old man smiling at him is as familiar as that broken ache. He wears a monocle and a hat and a shabby brown coat. His skin is wrinkled and heavy with unmistakably human age. This and his gray hair and beard erase any lingering need for observation. This is Geppetto, the man Sophia called his father.

Geppetto puts his hands on P’s shoulders. P lets him; this is the man he was sent for, and there is a warmth in his springs that tells him this is someone he can trust.

“It’s a dream come true, seeing you like this,” Geppetto says. He looks down, as if noticing the blood pooling around their shoes for the first time. “I understand why some people despise me.” He unsticks his boot and releases P’s shoulders. The blood clings at the rubber sole. P does not move as the blood gathers around his own shoes. “I invented the puppets, after all. I should take responsibility as their maker.” Geppetto is frowning.

P blinks at him.

Geppetto goes on to describe city hall and the puppets there, and then asks, “won’t you help me, son?”—and P takes a moment to parse the question, because he is a “son,” and the instinct in his springs tells him sons do things for their fathers that their fathers cannot do for themselves, so why would Geppetto bother to ask? When Geppetto finishes speaking, there’s silence.

P parts his lips. He has spoken before, but only rarely. Sound always vibrates through his gears and springs like an earthquake. When he does speak, he ensures to do it softly.

He wants to ask Geppetto what it means to have a father, when Geppetto is flesh and the same kind of red that coats P’s hands, and P is anything but. He wants to tell his father all about the puppets he has seen and their crackly, indecipherable voices, and ask what it all means.

“I want to hear all about your experiences, son,” Geppetto says before he can shape the words, “but now isn’t a good time.”

He reiterates the previous task—pointless, as P already knows it—and says, “we’ll catch up at Hotel Krat later.”

So P does not ask his questions, and takes the key his father gives him. He continues on to the city hall gate, and when he raises the key to the lock, he notices the blood again.

He flexes the coils of his knuckles. The blood squeezes through his fingers. P flexes his hand again, wondering if it will impede his ability to fight. He taps each finger twice against his thumb, clenches a fist to check his grip strength, and decides that it won’t. He fits the key into its slot and pushes the gate open.

Chapter Text

The sky is the flat gray of cement when P finally emerges from the labyrinthine tunnels of Venigni Works and back onto the balcony. His gears clink with every step, and the last glitterings of blue Ergo have gathered on the glass of his pulse cell like condensation. It’s not enough to inject, not yet, and the risk of going up against more of those faceless puppets is too high to attempt to charge it. He keeps a steady gait, despite the rattling limp in his left leg.

The ground shudders with every step of the puppet in the pit beneath the balcony. P keeps it in his peripheral vision, tracking its slow movements and the drag of its steel-balled fists through old machine sludge.

He stops in his tracks.

The balcony has a small metal awning with a perfect view of the monstrous puppet below. Two figures stand there: a tall woman in a red tailcoat and a frilly white collar leaning lasciviously against one of the posts, and a short, slight man in a black coat facing away.

P narrows his eyes. Their faces are hidden behind stiff animal masks. The Mad Donkey’s mask had been matted fur and glassy eyes; these were brightly colored and smooth, almost theatrical.

“Ooh! Admirers seem to follow me everywhere!” the woman in red– fox mask , P’s cogs supply–crows. P hears the human cadence in her voice and relaxes his grip on his rapier. “Pleased to see you, my Stalker friend.”

P cocks his head. He notes the rise and falls of her chest. She does not seem perturbed by any of this.

“You made it all the way here unbothered by ruffians. You’ve got talent! I’ve never seen you before, but who cares?” says the man in the black mask. Its shape resembles Spring, the orange cat that roams Krat’s lobby.

But Spring is soft and warm–or P imagines that she would be, as she hisses and runs each time he tries to find out.

The Red Fox woman’s mask dips as if assessing P. “This may well benefit our former client.”

When she says they were employed to help Lorenzini Venigni, P almost opens his mouth to ask if they can work together. 

The factory is sprawling, and crowded with puppets. P has scarcely turned a corner without tripping over an unfinished puppet or some strange, blazing design. It would be good to have someone to watch his back. It would be a logical decision, except Geppetto told him to be wary of strangers, and these two are most definitely strange.

Something in him wants to be near them anyway. Their voices have a cadence of playfulness, almost mischief, that sets his gears spinning. He doesn’t know why, but it reminds him of something.

“Maybe he’s handing out bags of money to lift his spirits,” Red Fox says– jokes . 

“That seems… unlikely. No way are we doing that,” says Black Cat. His tone is now nervous. 

“Well, anyhow, best of luck!” says Red Fox cheerfully. 

P unsticks his lips. Their eyes are unreadable behind the masks.

“Do… you…” He adjusts his stance to show the empty pulse cell on his belt. Red Fox tilts her head to see it, then glances back at Black Cat. P looks between them. They’re quiet; this is something humans do when they don’t understand things and are thinking.

“I need–” he begins.

Red Fox sucks her teeth beneath the mask. “We’re not puppets, Stalker friend. We don’t carry things like… that.”

“I’ve never seen a device like that before,” says Black Cat. “What does it do? Is it a weapon?” 

P’s lips hover open. He can’t find an answer for them. What does it do, exactly? It’s Ergo, and it keeps him running smoothly–like oil, almost, but not quite. It energizes him–somehow. 

“It’s Ergo, gatto ,” Red Fox cuts through his thoughts. “It keeps our Stalker friend alive.” She sounds amused again. “It’s his life-blood.”

“Ahh,” says Black Cat. “Huh.”

P waits until the silence grows long, eyes darting between them. It’s hard to tell when humans are done talking, especially with these masks. He can’t watch the tiny muscles at the corners of their mouths or the living, swirling thoughts behind their eyes.

It’s disappointing. He loves to watch humans think. It’s fascinating, and it makes him ache.

He ducks his head. “Thank you… anyway.”

“Of course, my friend,” says Red Fox.

P nods. He does a full circle to document all the halls he’s already explored. He recalls a path left unexplored higher in the factory. He sets off, turning his rapier over in his hand.

He finds a room of dangling puppets on a rack and manages to take them out quickly enough to charge the pulse cell. Little spores of Ergo whistle through midair, drawn by his momentous strikes to the glass tube. It chimes when it’s ready, and he releases it immediately.

As the energy returns to his joints and he feels his gears click back into smooth order, he notices a ladder near the corner. Naturally, he investigates, descending into a small room.

His foot taps the concrete and someone whimpers. He whips around, blade raised, ready for the drag of metal and wood from a puppet, and instead sees someone hunched over, head in his hands, crying.

P cocks his head. This man’s heart is beating.

He lowers his rapier and slowly approaches. Sometimes, when he is too light-footed on the Hotel Krat carpets, Antonia will gasp and put a delicate, gloved hand to her heart. “My goodness, you’ve startled me!” she’ll say, and P will wish that he had not. She doesn’t seem to like being startled very much.

He draws closer to the whimpering man. He is wearing an animal mask, too–a mouse in gray and gold. He’s muttering to himself.

“All puppets must die…” he whispers. “Every single one…”

P sheathes his rapier and drops it low enough to plink its tip against the floor. Still, the man does not rise.

Gingerly, he reaches out and rests his flesh-hand on the man’s shoulders. How had Geppetto done it? He’d squeezed him, which had been an odd sensation but not aggressive. He sensed a kind intent behind it–Geppetto was his father, after all.

P doesn’t try his metal arm. He has less fine motor control on its fingers.

The man shakes and raises his mask to see him. P gives his shoulder a gentle squeeze. 

He gasps. “I hear the sound of springs inside you…”

P squeezes his shoulder again. He is a puppet, yes, but something in him grates at being compared to the frenzied puppets. He is different, as his friends say.

“You’re a puppet too,” the man wheezes. “You can’t fool me!”

The man’s muscles tense, and P leaps back as he reaches for a blade. P draws his rapier. Desperately, he opens his mouth. “I’m not–”

“All puppets must die! Kill all puppets!”

P meets his first saber strike in a spray of sparks. The man lunges, and P slides away. As the man regains his footing, he groans. 

“I wish I had known that surviving is a hell of its own,” he says, and P is still processing the words and their implications when the Survivor’s saber catches him across the chest.

P’s springs whirr faster as he parries the next strike. He dodges around to the Survivor’s back and attacks in a flurry of strikes. While the Survivor is off-guard, he slams his rapier clean through the man’s back.

P waits for him to fall and backs up. “I’m a–” He thinks of Red Fox and her sly words. “I’m a friend .”

The Survivor rises. His breathing is thick and strangled. He attacks; P dodges and lands another swift strike to his shoulder. 

“I hear that thing in your chest ticking ,” the Survivor snarls. His slash hits P’s side. P dodges and gives a quick stab before leaping back. As the Survivor misses his counterattack, P dives in with renewed vigor.

Stab, dodge, parry, stab, dodge, parry. Battle is about patterns; dueling skill is not about strength or innate talent, but rather discipline. He knows when to strike, and he knows when not to strike, and he matches the pattern of warfare with mechanical precision. 

As he delivers another strike to the Survivor, who heaves and coughs, it comes in a flash to him: fighting is rather like dancing.

There is something beautiful about both. 

He hears the music: of shoes on concrete and quick breaths, of a well-timed parry and the swish of a blade through the air, the symphony of the Survivor’s off-beat coughs. He feels the whoosh of a near-dodge tickle his neck.

With that, he pivots on his heel as the Survivor crashes past him. P delivers his final storm of blows.

He stands, poised on the balls of his feet, rapier outstretched to one side. He swishes it back to his chest and the metal sings.

Blood flicks off the end and lands on his cheek. 

The Survivor collapses in a bloody heap.

“I’m sorry Leo… I was afraid to die…” The Survivor chokes. P stares at his body as it twitches. His fingers uncoil around the hilt of his saber. 

P touches the spot on his cheek. His finger comes away red and shiny.

The music is silent.

P crouches. He pulls the mouse mask from the Survivor’s face. 

Its inside is coated with thick, viscous crimson blood. More leaks from the man’s open mouth. It has spread all around the mask and pressed into his skin. It makes it difficult to discern anything about his face.

P watches the blood trickle from the mask and onto his fingertips.

P does something he’s never done before. He startles, dropping the mask with a clatter. He grabs his wrist to stop the malfunction shaking his knuckles.

The blood feels hot.

P narrows his eyes and screws up his face at the blood on his thumb and forefinger. His chest clicks and whirrs.

The lamp at his hip vibrates with a chirp. “Pal?” 

Gemini . He had been quiet for so long, P had forgotten he was there.

That was a nonsensical thought. Puppets did not forget–and yet, P is remembering.

“G-Gemini,” he says, and the word rattles through him. He shuts his mouth and tries again. “Have I ever danced?”

“Uhh… we haven’t had much time for dancing. It’s been ‘go here’, ‘do this’, ‘save Krat’, you know? Not that I don’t want to,” Gemini chirps. His lamp emits a sound like clearing its throat. “You look… distressed.”

P releases his hand. It’s finally still. Absently, he wipes the blood on his trousers. “What does that look like?” He stops the question before he can add ‘ on me ’. 

“Oh, all worried-like. Brow scrunched up, eyes narrowed… like that look Geppetto gets sometimes!” Gemini chirped a cricket-laugh. “You look like him when you do it. Like father like son, eh?”

P blinks. That sounds right. It certainly sounds more likely than the possibility that P had been doing something entirely new. He rests a palm on the top of Gemini’s lamp. Silently, he wishes the guide-cricket would talk more often. It always makes his springs uncoil and his gears loosen.

He continues on to the door across the room, carefully avoiding the Survivor’s body as if it were a stain on the floor. Gemini grows silent again. It has none of the awkwardness of speaking to Red Fox and Black Cat, when P couldn’t tell when they were done with their part and wanted him to go. 

That peculiar, hot feeling of wet blood on his fingers is gone. But that ache has settled in his chest, deeper and more acute this time; an ache of something he wishes he could ascribe to a loose wire or a gear out of place.

Perhaps it isn’t mechanical. P thinks of what Red Fox said about his pulse cell. 

Perhaps it’s in his very Ergo; his own life-blood.

If he were to describe the feeling, he would call it a discordance. He had killed the Survivor, a human, and in his killing had felt a moment of joy in the rhythm of it all. There was something wrong about that. He just didn’t know what.

Chapter Text

The rain is a distant rumble on the Red Lobster Inn’s roof as P steps from the main space and into the back. He keeps his rapier raised, but there’s no sign of carcasses here, just more gleaming dark wood and barrels. He makes a beeline for the back door, breathing a sigh of relief as it unlocks to reveal the Stargazer at the mouth of the Malum District. 

Red Fox and Black Cat are nowhere to be seen here, either. P pushes the thought away.

He takes a moment to scan the room for any supplies. There’s a slow, scratchy song playing from somewhere. He wants to find it in hopes of getting another record for the Hotel.

Instead, he finds a slip of paper on one of the covered pieces of furniture. He turns it over and sees a faded article beneath a large image. The image is obscured by an intricate drawing of a rose. The article reads:

Welcome to the Monad Charity House!

The Monad Charity House is also known by its nickname, the Rose Estate. Originally, we were a charity organization for poor children, but today with the Monad family's sponsorship, we've become a boarding school with high quality welfare and education curriculum.

Children can get Stalker, Workshop Technician, and Alchemist education according to their aptitude and career path. To this day, about 200 graduates are from the Monad Charity House and are actively working in different fields in Krat. For more details and sponsorship, please contact the Charity House manager.

He squints at the rose drawing. Two sets of handwriting are scrawled at a slant, and someone has drawn over the ‘p’ in the article’s headline.

It takes him a moment to parse the writing: You look like a donkey in this picture!

And beneath it, a response: Stop doodling on my picture, Romeo.

P frowns. He traces one finger across the petals of the rose. He wonders if the artist was Romeo or the other writer. 

Something about the name brings that ache back, like a spring stuck before release. He waits until it eases to pocket the paper.

It takes a few more moments of searching to find a ladder and ascend it. He finds a black market merchant hunched in the corner. He supposes it stands to reason that the usual wandering traders he finds wouldn’t intrude on the Black Rabbit Brotherhood’s territory. The thought makes him clench his fist.

But he lies to the merchant and tells him he is a Black Rabbit, as he wants to save his energy for the Rabbits themselves, and he suspects he’ll need to stock up on supplies for when he faces the Brotherhood. Red Fox and Black Cat said they would help, but he has a hunch that they’d rather hang back again. 

“Take a look,” says the merchant, slinging off his heavy pack and unfurling it across the ground. P’s eyes alight on a record tucked in a pocket, its edge gleaming in the oily lamplight. 

P points. “That.”

“Are you sure?” says the merchant. He pulls the pack a little more open to better show the cans of thermite and throwing cells that line the edges.

P nods. “I’ll buy it. Name the price.”

The merchant shrugs. The price is high, but P hands it over without a second thought. 

P spends his remaining Ergo on cluster grenades. The rain might interfere with the thermite and throwing cells are best saved for the mechanical, not the flesh.

He feels a stutter of excitement when he brushes his hand over the record’s lined surface. The merchant leers at him. “Come back next time. Business is hard to come by these days.”

P doesn’t need to ask why. From the way Sophia and his father had talked about the Malum District, he had expected some semblance of normalcy, even if it was under the foot of the Black Rabbit Brotherhood. But it seems the carcasses of the cathedral have spread unchecked–and the Black Rabbit Brotherhood, Stalkers who should have kept the people safe, have left them to rot in madness.

It fills P with an overwhelming… something. Feelings, things entirely unbound by the metal beneath his skin, are still rather new. At first, they felt like a crippling sickness: the soft plucking of guitar strings in the record Cecile had left him standing in a daze even after it had ended. But however unexpected they are, he has decided the best way to work through them was to–well, feel them.

Feelings remind him of lying. They aren’t true to the world around him, but then what is true? And aren’t some feelings, like lies, worth it?

He desperately wishes to talk with his father about this. He told himself he would return to Hotel Krat after taking out the Black Rabbits. They had turned his attempts to help the Malum District into a sick game with which he had no interest in playing along. They were a waste of the opportunities of humanity, and could not be afforded another minute of control.

He turns for the ladder and pauses. There is a painting on the wall, its bottom torn and curling from neglect.

“Ah,” said the merchant, following his gaze. “Just another spoil of the Black Rabbits. Don’t see why they bother keeping these sorts of things. No-one left in Krat has an interest in buying art. Seems they’re just appreciators.”

P nods along. His eye catches on what looks to be handwriting across the bottom of the painting. He draws closer, flicking on Gemini’s lantern to get a better look. 

Sure enough, when he holds the Monad Charity House guide beside the painting, the ink and writings match.

I’m going to be the greatest Stalker who ever lived!

And I’m going to be a better Stalker than Romeo.

That name again. P feels his face twist into a frown. He brushes his fingers over the torn edge of the painting.

“Are you… interested in buying?” the merchant asks hesitantly.

P’s fingers linger on one word.

Romeo .

“Where did the Black Rabbits get this?” he asks. Speaking has become easier and easier for him, though he still prefers to do so softly. 

“Ah, I don’t know. They’ve gone all around Krat at this point. Krat Central, the old Workshop ruins, the Rose Estate, Elysion Boulevard–wherever you see a bare wall or an empty shelf, the Brotherhood’s probably been there,” he says, and laughs sourly.

P recalls Krat Central and Elysion Boulevard, and Eugénie has mentioned the Workshop Tower enough to be familiar with it. But that other one, the Rose Estate, rushes through him like electricity with a rush of jumbled memories. He blinks and shifts his weight, struggling to hold onto them as they flee faster than they came.

The Monad Charity House, also known as the Rose Estate… His fingers clench around the piece of paper from downstairs and its rose-flower doodle. 

He doesn’t speak again until he’s outside and making his way down a rainy cobble alleyway, half-tranced. He taps Gemini’s lantern and decides to ask him.

“Do you know the Rose Estate?”

Gemini lets out a long, low chirp. “I’m not sure… it sounds familiar alright, but I don’t know why. Are you still thinking about that picture?”

“Yes,” P admits quietly. “I… I am thinking about a lot of things.”

“Care to share, pal?”

P trusts Gemini without a doubt; what holds his tongue is his own uncertainty. “I am experiencing a new feeling. I think.”

Gemini gives a high-pitched chirp. “Well! That’s certainly news. But, uh, do you think we’ll have time to talk it through? I’m not sure this place is entirely safe…”

P is certain that it isn’t, but there’s nothing behind him and he sees nothing ahead, so he stops. The rain soaks through his undershirt and straight to his skin. His hair is heavy and slick against his cheeks. He has to raise his voice for Gemini to hear him, and hopes to whatever angel it was that St. Andreus so firmly believed in that no beating heart is around to hear.

“It’s probably not,” he says, “but I want a clear head. It feels…”

Silence, and the pounding of the rain. Gemini makes a questioning sound.

P takes a deep breath. Raindrops drip from the tip of his nose. Perhaps this isn’t the time at all. “I don’t know. I feel as if… something is missing. Something is missing from me , and all that makes me.”

“What do you mean?” Gemini sounds hesitant. P doubts he’s making sense, but it’s a thought that has plagued him before and now insists on being heard.

“It’s all too easy,” he whispers. He half-hopes Gemini doesn’t hear him above the rain.

Because if there is a King of Puppets, then that means somebody made a King of Puppets; and if somebody made a King of Puppets, then why would they do such a thing? And what made Venigni and Geppetto so certain that killing him would end the Frenzy?

Since the Moonlight Pilgrimage, P has felt a new feeling, a powerful one: doubt. He has witnessed faith in its highest order: Giangio’s faith that the Gold Coin Tree exists, and will cure him; Cecile’s faith that St. Andreus was a good man; St. Andreus’s faith in himself, that he could fix all of this and whatever it was.

But with every step through Malum, and every step closer to the King of Puppets, P has feels his own faith fracture like ice under winter sun.

Killing the King of Puppets and ending the Puppet Frenzy will not fix what ails Krat.

And if that won’t, then what will?

And his doubt, this fickle thing, is spiraling. It is turning inward, it is unfolding outward, it is wrapping itself around every memory P carries of Geppetto’s warm smile, of his instructions to be a good boy and come back to me intact , of Sophia’s wavering sweetness as she whispers a little, but only a little, warmly, honestly, yet cryptically; it is weaving clever fingers between Antonia’s allusions to secrets and not answers .

This doubt is spinning and reaching and delving deeper, deeper, far into the annals of his beating Ergo heart, and with every beat it whispers his doubt back to him, a litany, an insistence, a request to do something :

Romeo, Romeo, Romeo , it echoes. He cannot remember when the name was first spoken.

He draws his rapier with a flick of rain. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Let’s end this.”

“Agreed,” says Gemini. “But… take care of yourself. I’m worried about you.” P wonders if his doubt has infected his friend.

When the Black Rabbit Brotherhood finally show themselves, calf-deep in water and pounding rain, they bring with them a coffin. P fixes them with the flattest look he can find, assessing their equipment as he readies for the fight.

They open the coffin and he sees the word liar painted inside.

He narrows his eyes.

When he fights, it feels new. It’s raw and bleeding, like a blister at the beach. It isn’t a dance, it’s a slaughter: P cuts down the youngest sister while ducking a blow from the Eldest. She glides away with a cry to her brothers that P doesn’t hear, and another comes to take her place.

P focuses on the Eldest now. His large blade is difficult to block, and he has a swiftness to it that would make dodging difficult. He leaps into the fray and blocks the Eldest’s first strike, landing a tentative counterattack on him before leaping away and out of range. In the corner of his eye, he sees the other brother bearing down on him, spear outstretched.

But the Eldest is pulling away–whether it’s for recovery or the odd fraternity of the Black Rabbits, P neither knows nor cares. He dives in with several attacks. The Eldest snarls behind his mask. Quicker than P can follow, his blade slams into P’s side.

A sharp breath escapes P’s pumps. He falls to one knee and coughs. Ergo and oil bubble up in his throat. He hears a sharp wheeze and wonders where it comes from when a force drives into his other size. Sparks fly as it strikes against his metal circuitry.

The spear goes directly through his chest and scraps the wooden column it pushes him into. He looks down, gears spinning as he tries to place what’s happening.

His chest lurches. He spits Ergo onto the spear handle.

“Eugh, look at it!” the Black Rabbit with the spear hisses. “It even bleeds wrong!”

“He looks human enough for me,” the youngest croons from somewhere overhead. 

There’s a new feeling in P’s springs, and it reminds him very much of fire.

He grips the spear haft and narrows his eyes through the rain. He lets out a cry–a gasp of heavy, wet breath that sends him back to his duel with the Mad Donkey–and kicks off from the Rabbit’s chest, hand pushing the spear away. It rips through part of his chest and he collapses into the water in a spray of sparks. He’s free.

The Eldest is approaching from his left. The Eldest bends his knees as if preparing to run. The Rabbit with the spear snarls something about Geppetto’s puppet as he backs away to give his brother space. P feels as if his springs are about to explode.

He fires his puppet string and bursts forth with a spray of water. The Rabbit with the spear raises his arm to cover the eye-holes in his mask. In his moment of distraction, P slams his rapier through his chest. He twists it and hears a squelching, satisfying cry. Blood sprays his face when he retracts the string.

The Eldest roars behind him. P yanks his rapier out, making the split second decision to let the spear-wielder crawl away alive as he ducks beneath the Eldest’s sword. The Eldest is mid-spin, sword raised. P yanks a cluster grenade from his belt. He slams it down the back of the Eldest’s rain-soaked coat.

He springs away. Pops and the faint smell of burning fill the air. The Eldest flinches and writhes.

He looks foolish like this. P snorts.

Sharp pain blooms in the small of his back. His body jerks. A cloud of white water follows as something yanks him back. He twists, rapier catching on the firm steel cord of a puppet string with a metallic shriek.

He blocks the saber-wielding Rabbit’s blade, but only barely. It leaves him winded. This Rabbit is fast; perhaps not as fast as the youngest, but he’s more methodical in his movements and far more sure-footed against the slick cobblestones of the flooded square.

His next strike catches P across the cheek. His head snaps back. Orange sparks sizzle over his skin. He does not let himself waste time as he pivots around to the man’s back to deliver a few swift strikes.

However fast the Rabbit is, he is faster. He must be.

It becomes a dance now, but it is a dance unlike any before. There is no shame in his coiled heart as he slices wound after wound across the saber-brother’s flesh. He wants to see his mask cut away and his face barren and helpless. He wants to see his lip quiver in the thing Venigni taught him was fear.

He wants to see the Rabbits regret what they’ve become, the shadow they’ve cast upon the Stalkers they were meant to be. The Stalkers are long dead, rendered useless by the graveyard they fought to protect. They had proven their inefficiency. Whoever was left and wielding that strength as if the golden days of Krat never ended were wicked, plain and simple, and far worse than the most blasphemous of liars.

Of which he belonged. He did not find a shred of doubt in this realization.

P sacrifices another pulse cell to ward off the wounds gaping across his body, but he defeats the saber-brother with a parry and a slash across the human tendons of his legs. He turns his blade to the Eldest. This dance is the hardest, but it’s a game of endurance more than anything else.

When it’s done, and the Eldest falls and the Rabbits throw smoke canisters across the square, P is panting. He paces back and forth through the water. He itches to taunt them, the way they taunted him. He flexes his gloved hands and feels music sing in his blue veins.

“Damn you,” he hears the saber-wielding brother hiss like a vengeful ghost through the smoke, “you’ll pay for that.”

P spits Ergo into the flooded square and hopes the Black Rabbits see. Rain soaks more down his cheeks. His coat drags heavy with water and blood and oil and whatever else grime floats here.

As the smoke begins to clear, some part of him urges him to pursue. He stops it, thinking over all the ways that would go wrong, and instead catches his breath as the storm clears.

When he at last feels ready, he limps onward toward the city hall. Gemini lets out an abrupt chirp. 

“Hey, hey, you don’t look so good!” says Gemini. “Maybe you should head back to the Hotel and let Geppetto take a look at you.”

“I’m fine,” P lies.

Gemini makes an exasperated sound. “You’re not, you’re–you’re bleeding all over the place!”

“‘S not blood.”

“Oh, you’re covered enough in that, don’t even get me started!”

P looks at his arms, still wet from the rain, and indeed sees spots of dark crimson. He touches his face and sees more. It still sickens him to look at, but the memory of the Brotherhood’s taunts drive his sympathy away.

He drags himself to the doorway of Malum District’s city hall. He’s not sure what he’s hoping to find, but it ought to be something worth all of us.

“Thank you for your concern, Gemini,” P says quietly as he trails oil and Ergo into the city hall. “But I’ll be alright a little longer. I’m a puppet, after all.”

“We both know you’re a little more than that,” Gemini whispers back, and the reply makes P shudder. 

His eyes feel hot. “Maybe.”

Gemini is quiet for a moment, as if thinking. Then he says, “alright, alright, fine! A little more, but only a little, and then we’re going straight back, you hear?”

P nods and rubs the lamp, hoping Gemini can feel his appreciation.

His search of the city hall is brief, but he still finds it, tucked away in a closet with a dozen other paintings. It stops him in his tracks. He nearly stops breathing entirely.

“Hey, check this out!” Gemini starts up. “Looks like you! Sort of. From a certain angle. You know… if you squint.”

P touches the painting’s frame, running his fingers over the burnished metal. Gemini chatters on.

“Nah, I’m just kidding. It looks exactly like you! I mean, you see it, right? With the nose, and the… right?” Gemini seems to realize P isn’t fully listening.

P touches two fingers to his cheek, to the cut the saber-brother opened. It’s already sealing from his pulse cell, but bits of Ergo and oil-grime linger. He holds his fingers out to the painting, hovering an inch from its canvas, as if trying to see an imprint.

The boy is frowning. He has a little furrow above his brow. P touches his own brow, smearing oil there. He remembers what Gemini said in Venigni Works.

Brow scrunched up, eyes narrowed… like that look Geppetto gets .

He feels around his brow bone and the corners of his eyes. 

“Buddy?” Gemini says. “You’re starting to freak me out a little bit.”

“Sorry,” says P, bringing his hand back to his side, and he means it. He can hardly understand all of this himself. He must be doing a rotten job of explaining it to Gemini. “It’s just odd.”

“Let’s go back to Hotel Krat, okay?” says Gemini. This time, P nods along.

“Yes,” he whispers, eyes fixed on the painting. 

He pulls the painting from its table with great care. When he leans it against the wall, he notices his hands. They’re caked in oil and blood. Too filthy to carry the portrait without marking its frame--and the painting feels holy, like the grand organ in St. Frangelico’s Cathedral, or the great Stargazer in Hotel Krat, or even the record player, more divine than any saint P’s ever met.

He wipes his hands on what’s left of his coat, figuring that if Eugénie can fix up what he’s brought her before, then she can clean a few stains. He wipes until his hands are clean of blood, and only then does he exhale a shaky sigh. When he returned to Hotel Krat from the Alchemist Bridge, Spring had hissed and spat at the state of his hands. 

He tries to remember the gratification of the fight and its blood. There’s a ghost of something, but he can’t tell if it’s the giddy satisfaction of watching the Brotherhood suffer or the plain fulfillment of a puppet following its string. 

He catches himself frowning over the quandary and sees the portrait of the boy. His frown deepens. P wonders if his own expression is a reflection of the ones he’s seen, or a replicate of how one ought to be. Either way, he’s glad his hands are clean.

Chapter Text

“I know just where to hang it in the Hotel,” Geppetto says when P brings him the portrait and tells him what happened in the Malum District. “Come.”

Geppetto rises from his seat with a slight groan. P lifts the painting and carries to where his father directs. 

“Help your old man, will you?” Geppetto asks, indicating an empty spot of wall near the door. P nods. He carries the portrait there and waits for Geppetto to fetch a small hammer and hooks. P hammers them in as delicately as he can and lifts the painting there.

Geppetto lets out a shaky exhale. “Before… in a happier time… people celebrated the hangings of important paintings.”

P watches his father’s face. Wetness glimmers in Geppetto’s eyes. P’s previous frustrations, his pressing questions, the outline of the unsettling rage he had felt against the Black Rabbit Brotherhood–all of it fades away in the face of his father’s… what? 

Whatever Geppetto is feeling is not pleasant. P tilts his head as he tries to discern it. He aches to help.

People celebrated the hangings of important paintings . P brings his hands together haltingly, in a brief, stuttering clap. Geppetto looks at him with surprise. 

P relaxes into the clap. It feels natural.

Geppetto smiles. It doesn’t quite look happy, but P figures it’s better than before. He puts a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, my son.”

P tries to return his smile, lips twitching, but he isn’t quite sure how. He looks back at the painting. “Why does he look like me?”

Geppetto’s fingers flinch and retract. “That is a very difficult question. I… am not sure I’m ready to answer it.”

P searches for more words. “Who is he?”

Geppetto gazes at the painting. There is too much happening in his face for P to identify. “He was someone very precious to me.”

“Like me?”

“Yes,” Geppetto says quietly. “Very much like you.”

P’s curiosity isn’t satisfied, but he’s not sure what questions to ask or how to word them. Besides, the more they talk about the painting, the more distressed Geppetto becomes. P fidgets with the white cuffs of his coat, freshly fixed and laundered by Eugénie. It is as if the fabric never knew the dark of blood or the white-hot burn of Ergo.

P takes a step back. His father still stares at the painting. “I’ll… retrieve the key from Lady Antonia.”

He waits. Nothing.

P bows his head. His father is sad, he decides. If P fixes this, it will cure his father’s sadness. It will turn his eyes to P, and they will all be happy. “I’ll kill the King of Puppets. I promise it.” He wonders what the promise of a lying puppet is worth. 

When the door clicks shut behind him, P catches himself frowning again. He had walked into that office, portrait in hand, freshly rested and fixed, ready to confront his father with all the questions he had gathered in the Malum District.

Yet when he saw his father, old, gray, and human, any accusation of secrets or omissions fled. 

What son didn’t trust his father?

Geppetto would tell him what he needed to know when he needed to know it, the same way he had refreshed P’s stuttering memories of Krat.

On the way down to Antonia, P passes Spring perched atop a stack of boxes. He holds out his hand, palm up, a few inches from Spring’s whiskers. Eugénie was the one to show him how to lure a cat when Spring darted under her workbench to escape P’s clumsy attempts to hold her.

“Patience,” she consoled, laughing and scooping the fluffy orange cat into her arms. “She has to come to you, see?” Eugénie had held a hand out and Spring dived against her knuckles, letting out a sonorous purr. “You hold out your hand, like you’re asking her to dance. It’s a peace offering.”

Eugénie had nuzzled Spring’s forehead. Spring’s eyes were nearly shut. P could have sworn the cat was glaring at him.

Spring still whinges from P’s latest attempt, ears flat to her head. P sighed, shaking out his hand and continuing on his way.

He pauses briefly at Polendina to restock some of the items in his bag. There is a peculiar addition to Polendina’s collection. P points it out.

“An apple, sir,” says Polendina.

“An apple,” P repeats, unsure if he heard correctly. It’s a vibrant red and the first fresh fruit P has seen since waking. He has heard Eugénie and Venigni speak longingly of strawberries and pears and apples, and they always speak so wistfully that it leaves him feeling as if he’s missing something.

He can’t eat. He’s never wanted to. “I’ll buy it,” he says anyway. Polendina, a puppet through and through, makes the exchange without hesitation.

“Hurry up. I heard from Geppetto,” Lady Antonia says as P approaches her wheelchair. “Rosa Isabelle Street is ever so dangerous, I’m told. I hoped we wouldn’t have to unlock the passage there. But if we want to stop this disaster once and for all, I fear we’ve no choice.”

P presses his lips together.

She clasps his hand, the key warm where she holds it against his skin.

“Geppetto and I care about you very much, you know,” she says gravely. Her one eye fixes upon him. P straightens under her gaze. “Stay safe–for both of us.”

She releases his hand. P opens his mouth, itching to voice the doubts that had plagued him since the Malum District. Antonia knows everything there is to know about Krat and living. She would soothe him; he knows it.

Perhaps she can tell him why the name Romeo has lodged itself so firmly in his circuitry. Perhaps she can tell him why it aches his heart as if its very springs were broken.

“I feel like my time… is slowly coming to an end,” Antonia says before he can speak. A horrible pang strikes the springs of P’s heart. She says it with such formality, tinged with sadness. She continues on briskly. “However, it’s a nice feeling to know that someone waits for you–that someone cares.” She looks at him again. “Please take care out there.”

P nods and swallows his doubts. He does not wish to weigh them on Lady Antonia. He has never seen her falter, not once, but the bare quiver in her voice when she spoke of her time coming to an end is enough.

He holds the key until its teeth dig into his palm, and he goes to Rosa Isabelle Street.

~

P’s first step into the Estella Opera House echo. 

It is as beautiful as Hotel Krat yet far grander, marble floors polished to a gloss, rich, velvet carpet vivid as fresh blood. The lighting is soft and warm here, as if the building itself holds its breath. It is warm, but comfortably so, far from the blazing heat of the avenue to its door. 

It is silent. When his heel hits the carpet instead of marble, it swallows the sound whole. 

He cannot explain the instinct in his gears to hold his breath. It just feels as if the rest of the building does, too.

He cannot explain the tenseness in his gears or the feeling of watchful eyes all around him.

It feels final. It feels expectant. It feels like a tomb.

The puppets here are unlike any he’s encountered either. The little squealing puppets with their cutting hands and glimmering golden strings send his gears stuttering against themselves. It is not electricity; it’s something else.

He dodges from their quick, sharp hands and makes quick work of them. When he advances up the central staircase and to the left, tip-toeing like an intruder, he encounters the source of these puppets. 

It has the legs of a spider and the torso and head of a humanoid puppet. He catches it while its many legs wind more of that shimmering golden string into invisible coils. When it sees him, its flat, humanoid face bends back with a creak. Dark stains–dirt or something worse–darken its white legs and dress. Its skull is done up to resemble a wealthy woman’s operatic wig. 

Then she sings.

Her cry is piercing. Golden light gathers about her blank face and she raises her arms.

He feels the pain in his heart acutely. He tries to cover his ears with the hand that holds his rapier while his other instinctively clutches at his chest. 

The springs beneath thud in response. He squeezes his eyes shut. 

P never knew a heartbeat to be painful. It squeezes and squeezes. Ergo itches against his skin like insects, alighting nerves he didn’t know he had. But worst of all are the bursts of emotion her screech brings.

All at once she is done, and P surges forward. He slams his first strikes directly into her chest. Thankfully, she’s slow to turn and strike. He dodges behind her and slices off her back legs. Her puppet-body stutters, and he finishes her off with a blow to the back. She lets out a squeal, rising one final time as if to attack, then flops to the carpet in a broken heap. 

P is shaking. Something wet is on his cheeks. 

Whatever she inflicted on him is gone, but the memory of it remains. When he touches his face, half-expecting blood, what comes away is clear liquid. 

Tears , his mind supplies.

He remembers the emotion that flooded him when she sang and finds a name for it, a name he ought not know: regret.

He furiously wipes his face with his sleeve, hoping Gemini hasn’t noticed. He isn’t sure what to make of all of it.

Kill the King of Puppets . He tightens his grip, Geppetto’s instructions echoing through his head. Kill the King of Puppets. End the Frenzy. Save Krat . Sophia, Eugénie, Venigni, Lady Antonia, Father–they are all counting on him.

Save Krat. Kill the King of Puppets . 

He can do this. He has killed puppets before. What more is a king? 

Puppet kings don’t bleed, he tells himself. This battle will be short. It isn’t like the Rabbits, who called one another family, or the Survivor with his regrets, or the Mad Donkey with his determination. This is his purpose. 

No puppet should tire, yet it’s that exhaustion that pushes him forward.

The little feminine puppets controlled by the spider-puppets are easy, familiar foes. Vicious, certainly, and quick, but they have a pattern that is easy to learn. The only thing P learns about the spiders is that he hates them, and when they begin to sing, there is nothing to do but flee or waste valuable time uncorking an ampoule.

Worst of all, it doesn’t seem to matter how far he runs. Some degree of their song still reaches him, and each time it has him nearly doubled over in pain, clenching his teeth as the Ergo in his veins seems to bubble and scratch.

The next time he hears it scream, he isn’t nearly swift enough. It hits P full force, knocking him back. He barely keeps his footing as an overwhelming wave of desperate regret washes over him. He cries out in pain.

Memories flash behind his eyes, too swift to follow. It is less seeing than feeling: the sensation of smooth wood on his fingertips, cold piano keys and delicate music, bare feet on warm sand, the crash of waves, and a flash of yellow hair and dark eyes.

Romeo . The name strikes him again. He snaps back into focus as the spider’s legs come crashing down against his chest. He scrambles away, releasing a pulse cell and putting distance between himself and the spider. He propels himself into it with his puppet string and dispatches it before it can recover. 

He feels it there, as the last of the spider’s squealing music dies in the air, whispers curled in the fine golden light she leaves behind. 

Wake up , they murmur.

They fade before he can reach out or think to respond. He turns in a full circle, searching for some sign that he didn’t imagine it.

Gemini is silent. P doesn’t want to say anything to worry him. His breath is coming quicker and sharper, and the Estella Opera House eats the sound greedily. The velvet curtains sit like sculptures, heavy and unmoving against their faintly lit windows.

Everything here is a facade. P stalks down the hall, clenching and unclenching his legion arm with a series of metal clicks. The opera house looks as if the Frenzy and the Petrification Disease never struck. It is designed to trick and disorient, to send him to his knees with false recollections and attacks upon his very Ergo.

It is a mockery. P discovers as he fights his way down the halls that he does not like to be mocked.

When he finds the half-collapsed antechamber before the theater and its swinging fire chandelier, he almost rushes through to get it over with. But a sound tickles the edge of his hearing–music, real music, played on a scratchy gramophone that reminds him of the amphitheater and the White Lady.

He follows it hesitantly. Every step in Estella Opera House feels like a gamble. Every empty hall and corner turned without a puppet behind it sets him more on edge.

He finds the source of the music in a small room off the balcony above the antechamber. He guesses this was once the way to the theater’s mezzanine, though the doors are blocked by refuse. 

A woman in a red grown, bare arms wrapped in teal silk, is sprawled on a chair while a gramophone plays beside her. Her face is stained with tears and black cosmetics. Her brown-red hair still holds the faint shape of luxurious curls, yet they are now unwashed and lank. 

She is muttering to herself, apologizing over and over to a ‘Patricia’. P recalls the White Lady’s final, gasping words as red stained her white coat: we match .

This must be Adelina Corday. Gemini said something about her final, famous performance on their arrival. He hopes it doesn’t hurt him to see her like this.

Adelina raises her eyes to him. She shudders. He tenses. Will she flinch away in fear? Will she hear the tick in his chest as the Survivor did? Perhaps there’s a knife hidden somewhere in her silken scarf. He poises a hand above his rapier.

“I’m… parched…” she breathes. Her face twists, slowly, as if the strain to move the muscles of her face is nearly too much. “Just a taste of fruit…”

Her eyes are wide and glassy. More tears trickle down her cheeks.

P exhales, and feels a twist in his springs. He releases his rapier and kneels so they may face one another on the same level. She tracks the movement, mouth slightly open, moving in starts and stops.

He recognizes the symptoms. Petrification Disease, in its later stages. He does not see the stone scales that had all but consumed the weeping woman on Elysion Boulevard, but she can’t have much time left.

He prays Antonia never looks this way in the end.

P fumbles in his bag and finds the apple. He mourns its loss for a moment, telling himself he could never have tasted it anyway. Besides, Adelina needs it. He needs her to have it.

She cups it in shaking, skeletal fingers. P sees then that she is not elegantly slender, like the portraits of wealthy women he has seen, but bony and famished. He watches her eat, the juice dribbling down her chin, wide eyes shutting in quick, firm blinks as she bites into it. It takes her a few tries to close her mouth and chew. Another tear falls down her cheek. P hopes it is a tear of joy.

“Oh, thank you!” she says. “This is the sweetest apple I’ve ever had…”

“I’m glad,” P whispers. His voice is hoarse. 

“I can’t stop death from taking me, but I have enough strength to confess my sins. Can you listen to my last confession?” she croaks.

P nods. He takes the hand in her lap into his own, the way Antonia did for him, and holds it. Adelina stares at it, half eaten apple in her other hand, and begins to speak.

P listens. He does not look away from her face. It’s the least he can do, in her final moments. Partway through her speech, as she shuts her eyes and begins to cry again, mumbling about Patricia and her voice, her hand turns to hold his wrist back.

She is no victim of frenzy , P thinks. He knows, in the back of his head, that killing the King of Puppets will do nothing to save Adelina Corday. It frustrates him. He doesn’t understand why , why he can’t help her, why the King of Puppets is his target if the city is rotting from something else entirely.

The king is childish, he decides. The King of Puppets was the last ridiculous distraction to send Krat over the brink. How dare the king strike now? How dare the king turn the audience from Adelina to himself? 

He wants to tell Adelina that Patricia loved her, right until the end, but he doesn’t know if that will hurt her more or less. 

So instead he listens, and as she trails off into more and more ramblings, he gently pulls the apple from her grip and clumsily cuts it into slices for her with his rapier. He rests these on the table beside the gramophone. He doesn’t want to interrupt her, so he lifts her wrist, sticky with apple juice, and rests it directly upon the slices.

When P goes to face the King of Puppets, he feels ready. He dodges the flaming chandelier and marches to the doors of the theater. He decides that no matter what waits within, this is ending.

The theater is far larger than he could have imagined. The ceiling soars up and up to a grandiose golden chandelier. Rows and rows of seats stack up the walls. More chairs and tables are scattered across the smooth marble floor, delicately arranged as if expecting guests at any moment. 

He has scarcely made it down the steps and halfway across the floor when the darkened stage is lit with a spotlight. 

There is a puppet, faceless and jerky with a lopsided gray wig and spectacles, its chest colored in black wood over its metal joints like an overcoat. It totters across the stage and music kicks up from somewhere, dramatic and sharp like the accompaniment to an overzealous opera. 

P takes a step closer. That puppet looks like… but no, that can’t be right at all.

The music turns tense as the the gray-haired puppet comes behind another hunched over in a chair. Its wood has been painted blue and red, except for its metal heart, which is left exposed.

It has a wig of short, carefully fluffed black hair. The gray haired puppet bends over it and it begins to jerk and writhe. Its arm stretches out for P.

P is dressed nearly identical to the puppet.

The puppet in the chair at last goes limp with a sharp climax in music, and the gray-haired puppet begins its slow, jerking walk toward center-stage as the music turns tense again.

It’s meant to be his father. It’s meant to be Geppetto. P’s eyes dart between the slumped, unremarkable dirty-white puppet in the center-stage chair and the puppet painted like him collapsed in the darkness. The Geppetto-puppet is holding his–its–metal heart.

The Geppetto-puppet fits the metal heart into this new puppet and comes behind the chair. 

And, as the music dances up in a cheerful scale, this new puppet rises, lifting its arms to invisible strings, and springs into a triumphant pose, teetering a little as its joints squeak.

The Geppetto-puppet claps, and the lights of the theater flick on. The sound echoes.

“What is this?” he mutters to himself. What, exactly, was this king trying to insinuate? That he was some kind of fake? He thinks of the boy in the portrait, and wonders which puppet on-stage he’s supposed to be, and what the king is implying about Geppetto.

It is one thing to mock him. It is another entirely to mock his father.

A shadow blocks the light above him. He doesn’t flinch when the puppet lands before him bare feet away, sending cracks splintering through the marble. The ground rumbles. P looks the thing in the face.

It’s an ugly face. Everything about the king is ugly and garish, polished to an annoying shine like the rest of the opera house. Its horrible face is blue-eyed and scored with wrinkles. It flicks its lopsided crown back into place. P grits his teeth.

The music shifts. It’s pleasant and light, with a steady beat. The King of Puppet’s pipe-arms extend. It holds out one great, brassy hand.

P can hardly believe what he’s seeing. 

You hold out your hand, like you’re asking her to dance. It’s a peace offering . Eugénie’s words return to him.

P slaps the hand away. The nerve of it infuriates him.

The music stops abruptly. P glares at the king as it looks at its hand. Its head spins to red eyes and–P notes this with distant unease–grief. He recognizes the expression from Julian when he learned of his puppet-wife’s fate.

The king does something else entirely unexpected. It puts its head in its hands and makes a grating, mechanical sob. 

It’s pathetic. P draws his rapier and falls into a fighting position.

Kill the King of Puppets. End this ridiculous charade.

The fight that follows leaves P more unsettled than angry. His initial rage fades into something still warm, yet somehow brighter. He doesn’t know the name for this new feeling, but as quickly as it comes, it’s gone again. The thing left in its place can only be called unease.

Parry, pause, parry, strike, parry if it attacks again–it isn’t long before the King of Puppets suddenly grows erratic. P backs away as it thrashes and wails in that hollow, distorted cry again. 

He has never known a puppet to cry. Well, other than–he pushes the thought away and sharpens his rapier.

The King of Puppets lifts itself on its pipe arms and begins the duel again.

It’s more difficult this time, but P still cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong. Its attacks are more frenzied than before, but it uses its long, flexible arms to push him away rather than pull him in. When the first one hits him in the chest, it knocks down row after row of wooden tables and chairs until P can duck beneath its claw. He releases his pulse cell.

The King of Puppets bends. Blue Ergo whistles through the air, tugging chair legs and splinters of wood into a swirling tempest. P shields his face with an arm and rushes in and behind, hoping to catch it off-guard.

The Ergo flashes in his eyes. It’s ice-hot against his skin. He feels it again, the rush of familiar sensations the spider-puppets instilled:

Laughter, warm fingers in his,  dark eyes smiling, always smiling –

P shoves his hand blindly into his belt and hurls the first thing he finds. The throwing cell bursts across the King of Puppets and the Ergo stutters into nothing. The King of Puppets lets out a roar and falls thunderously. Cracks arc across the floor and toward the walls. 

P backs away. The King of Puppets raises his hands to the heavens and wails. All at once, its eyes darken and the crown topples from its head.

P has half a moment to wonder if it’s done when the chest cavity pops open with a clatter.

Within lies a man, or something close to one. His body is dark sheets of hard, gray steel. 

But his face…

His hair is long, yellow, and dirty. It brushes his chin. His skin is deathly pale.

It is the barest glimpse, and yet it sets P’s circuitry scrambling. And all of a sudden, the King of Puppet’s outer shell is exploding, shrapnel skidding across the marble floor and smashing through the stage. P covers his face.

Fire rains across the stage. The chandelier shudders and sparks. 

P has to look.

There’s a split second of relief as he sees the man kneeling among the remains of what was once the King of Puppets. Pipes still cling to his back and the larger puppet-body. Half of his face has burnt away, revealing dark metal cogs and circuitry beneath and one blazing crimson eye.

Metal shrieks against marble. The blond puppet drags with it a scythe taller than P, gears clicking and clacking along its blade as it slips into place with the haft. 

He points the scythe at P. His human face is flat. His puppet’s face is cruel.

P has time to take a breath before the King of Puppets charges. He’s a blur as he leaps and spins midair. P dodges back as the scythe slams into the floor where he stood. The blade drives straight through the marble.

The King of Puppets will have to pull that out. P takes the risk.

He leaps forward, rapier knocking across the king’s cheek, cutting some of the blond hair away. The king pulls the scythe from the floor and jerks his face away. All P sees is the curtain of blond hair before he’s turning, dark human eye fixed in a scowl, red puppet eye agleam with fire.

There is a cut across his cheek. P is close enough to see the blood.

“Romeo,” he breathes. 

The scythe slams into his ribs. The dance begins anew.

Chapter Text

Carlo .

Hotel Krat is never quite quiet. If he listens closely, he hears the clinks and thuds of Eugénie as she tinkers with whatever weapon he’s brought her. Venigni likes to talk to himself while he drafts blueprints for legion arms or, sometimes, far-off plans for extravagant balls and parties. 

Alidoro talks to himself as well, low mumblings under his breath muffled by the mask. He always stops when P approaches.

Sophia doesn’t speak and seldom walks. When she does, it’s more like gliding. But there’s a sound to her nonetheless; a quiver of Ergo in the air, as if it fights for her attention.

Lady Antonia hums. P noticed it when he would sit for long minutes in the library staring at the piano, or the bookshelf, or whatever else caught his eye. Her room was the only one in the lobby he could properly sit in. He would do so for hours. It was likely why he startled her so much.

Today, he sits against the wall in an armchair and curls as tightly as his metal joints allow. Gemini’s lamp sits dormant on a nearby table. P stares at the necklace cupped in his palm, turning it around to catch the light and reading the words again and again.

To Romeo, your friend C.

It’s large and brassy with a dark blue M engraved in the center. It matches the M on the old uniform Lady Antonia gave him that he used to wear before Fuoco burnt it beyond repair.

He traces the shape of this letter. Each time he does, he swears he can hear it again: that warm breath of words on the back of his neck, as if calling him to something. He would never know what.

He knew that voice, oh, of course he did. Even corrupted and corroded, he would know Romeo’s voice. 

“Talk to me,” he whispers at the necklace. It doesn’t, of course. It’s only a necklace, like he’s only a puppet and Romeo is only scrap metal. Necklaces don’t talk. 

He tugs on his newly-grown hair. He wonders if he should cut it. He wonders if that would make Geppetto happy.

He wonders how many puppets grow hair.

I know how many bleed, he thinks bitterly. Or I did.

What an awful curse, emotions. It feels as if his heart is breaking in two. He’d rather it actually do so, and he could go to Geppetto and sit in his chair and listen to his father tell him he was precious, he was his son, he meant something, and then fix it all with a wrench and a crushed Ergo chunk.

He also wants to throw open the doors to Geppetto’s office hard enough to send them off their hinges. He wants to march to that desk and punch a hole through it.

Did you make him? He wants to demand. You said you made the puppets. Did you make him ?

Did you know? 

Why didn’t you tell me?

He’s not very good at imagining things. He always gives up, unable to craft a response or anything after that.

He supposes that was another side effect of being a puppet. What use was a tool who dreamed?

He tilts the necklace around again, running his fingers over the shape of the name Romeo . 

Julian had been grateful when P brought him his wife’s wedding ring. His wife was dead, but the mere thought that she loved him had been enough to steady him through his grief. The memory of her love was all he needed; he had given the wedding ring, a symbol of everything he had, to P. Was that what one did when grieving? Should he give the necklace away? The very idea nearly sends him into a panic.

Then again, Adelina had killed herself from the guilt of betraying her sister. Humans were too complicated.

A meow interrupts his thoughts. He peers over his knees to see Spring sitting on the carpet. Her fluffy tail swishes back and forth. Her dark eyes watch P. 

Of course. She likes to sit here sometimes. “Sorry,” he says.

Spring blinks one eye at a time at him.

He reaches out a half-hearted hand.

Surely, no being would be so cruel as to bat away a peace offering.

Spring stands. He waits for her to hit him. Instead, she presses her little head into his palm. He feels a rumbling purr.

P blinks. Slowly, he moves his hand around the way Eugénie did, scratching a bit behind the ears and on the forehead. Spring closes her eyes contentedly. Awed, he moves to the fur beneath her chin. It looks so soft; he can hardly resist.

Spring twists under his hand and bites at his finger. “Ow,” he says, feeling a sting, and pulls away. 

Spring meows innocently.

“You could have just done so to begin with,” P mutters sulkily, pulling his hand back to his chest and holding the necklace again.

Spring licks at her paw. P ignores her. His eyes are burning again. 

It’s only Spring , he chides himself. Whatever did you expect ?

He turns the necklace over to read the note again. He pauses and lifts his hand to the light.

Spring’s fang left a tiny cut along the inside of his ring finger on his right hand. He cocks his head at it. 

The cut turns red. 

Blood .

P brings his hand down before anyone can see, hastily checking his surroundings. It’s only him and Spring. He looks again.

He pinches the skin around it. The cut is too shallow to properly bleed. He doesn’t even know if it could.

He cradles it in his legion arm like a precious thing. It’s proof of something. He doesn’t know what yet.