Chapter Text
It was supposed to be in and out, a short, simple mission hardly worth mentioning if not for the sum that The Cat was offering for his fiddles retrieval.
The Cat was a twitchy thing. Too skinny and far too paranoid. Puss hadn’t heard great things about him in the past, but everybody he had employed was still around, and many of their complaints revolved around The Cat trying to micromanage their heists. He did hang around Puss and Kitty while they discussed their entry points, which was annoying, if harmless. Anything to complain about was mitigated by the fact that The Cat was well off enough to offer them a practical fortune for the return of his keepsake, so Puss tried not to mind.
Throughout their meeting, he had giggled, flinched, and reached with what must have been muscle memory for the instrument that they were to fetch for him. He had apparently pawned it off to The Mouse up in the clocktower of Hickory Dickory some years before and desperately wanted the thing back.
Getting to the town was simple, and scaling the tower was easy enough. The only real difficulty was the guards that The Mouse employed. However, if they timed it with one of the clocks' deafening chimes, they had plenty of cover to hide them while they located and found the fiddle.
In practice, the scheme was a bit more difficult to pull off. Or perhaps, though he wouldn’t admit it under torture, Puss was out of practice. Spending so much time falling into an early retirement out of fear for his life had softened him, just a bit.
Puss and Kitty had had to leave Perrito with some friends (what was an extra dog to someone used to dealing with a horde of young ogres and dronkeys?) as he had more difficulty keeping up when they scaled vertical inclines and was less used to relying on stealth. Even if Kitty had joked about leaving Puss behind for the very same reasons.
Feeling the absence of their missing member, Puss kept finding himself glancing back with words of caution on the tip of his tongue as he and Kitty prowled through the city, slipping in and out of alleyways, and hoping that anybody who might have looked up missed their silhouettes moving against the skyline.
“Come on,” Kitty urged, voice quiet as she poked her head out to peer around a corner. “Stop lagging behind. The sooner we get the fiddle—“
“The sooner we can get paid and get out.” Puss cut her off, rolling his eyes. “Si, I’m aware of how this whole thing works.”
“Are you sure?” She turned to him, folding her arms together as she glanced him over. “You’ve been acting more skittish than The Cat was with his fiddle withdrawals or whatever he was calling them.”
“Musicians, eh?” Puss waved her off. “I’m fine.”
He was working on lying less, and more on paying mind to others. But he really was fine, just… focused on the wrong thing. Puss had pulled off missions while distracted before, so his current state was hardly an issue, despite whatever lingering look Kitty gave him before he took the lead.
As planned, they made it through the city uneventfully and began to scale the clock tower a few minutes before midnight, avoiding the passing guards and tiny mouse spies that protected The Mouse and her fortune. They always seemed to forget to look up.
“Not as easy as it used to be, is it, old man?” Kitty called down to him once some guards passed the corner, the night silent as high into the air as they were, aside from the faint clicks of their climbing tools puncturing the walls of the tower.
“Old man?” Puss sputtered, offended. “I’m not that old!”
“Says the gato on his ultima vida.”
“Those weren’t because of age! They’re simply from—”
“Stupidity?”
Puss grumbled curses under his breath that she obviously got the gist of if her slight laugh was any indication. After a moment, he managed to fish out a flirtation past his indignation. “Maybe I just like the view from down here.”
“Keep dreaming, Puss. You know my fur blends in with the sky too well.”
“And what a beautiful sky it is,” he said, voice smooth.
Above him, Kitty stabbed the wall a bit harder than she needed to, and let the rocks crumble, hitting him in the face. He shook his head with a huff and moved a bit to the side, speeding up to join her as they finally pulled themselves over the edge of the tower.
“No guards,” Kitty noted.
“They’re probably going to check here eventually, so let's choose a path and go. Left or right, mi amor?”
“What a gentleman.” Kitty glanced to either side. “I’ll take the left door. The Cat figured it was a floor or so down?”
“That’s where The Dish and The Spoon said they saw most of The Mouse’s treasure,” Puss nodded. “Meet here on the twelfth chime?”
Kitty nodded and turned to rush off.
Puss took the right door and crept along the short hall just inside the tower, keeping an ear out for any guards passing by. When he heard none, he took the stairs down and strolled into a carpeted room with dozens of stands pressed against the wall, trinkets encased in glass sitting at the top of each one.
“Brick from the London Bridge, a buckled shoe, the pea,” Puss listed off under his breath, glancing between labeled treasures as he made his way down the hall.
The tower creaked, and he stilled, waiting for someone to appear. When they didn’t, he continued on, picking up the pace. He only had so much time before the tower chimed to hide their escape and any chaos they managed to create along the way.
It was odd that he hadn’t seen anybody since they had been on the ground level. Usually, he would have taken it as a sign of good luck, or assumed that The Mouse thought the security of his lower levels to be enough to stop any trespassers. However, Puss was trying to be more careful with his last life, so he at least took note of the oddity and proceeded with caution.
At the end of the row, just before the next set of doors, sat an empty podium, where all the others had already been filled. Inside sat a plush pillow, with the word Boots inscribed on some parchment.
At the same time that the first chime struck, Puss narrowly avoided being skewered with a knife that embedded itself in the wall.
“The fiddle isn’t here,” A voice said in the lull of silence between chimes. He turned to see a woman in a bonnet halfway inside the door, pulling a thin sword out of a shepherd's crook.
“Who are you supposed to be?” Puss asked, edging closer to the knife. “A—”
A sheep, of all things, barreled into his side, knocking him away from the knife. He managed to push the heavy animal off of him in the same movement he used to pull his sword from its sheath, holding it between himself and his assailants.
“Puss in Boots,” the woman began, and continued to talk as the bell chimed again, drowning her own.
“Baa,” The sheep said once the deafening noise quieted, the reverberations still echoing through the halls.
Puss rubbed at one of his ears, wishing he had brought earplugs. “Lady, I couldn’t hear you over the noise.”
She deflated, looking frustrated. “You really don’t remember me? Bo-Peep? We were in San Ricardo together.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Puss quipped right as the next chime began.
The sheep leaped at him, and Peep swung her sword as he moved to avoid her animal companion. He managed to catch her blade with his own, struggling to hold it before he vaulted back and then over the nearest podium.
“So what’s this for, exactly?” he asked once it went quiet again. He backed away from the two, back towards the staircase he had descended. “Let me guess. Revenge?”
“Revenge,” Peep confirmed, lobbing another knife his way.
Puss tipped his hat to them and turned with a sprint, gunning for the steps.
That, however, proved to be a bit more challenging with the tower shifting suddenly like it had been hit from the side. When he glanced back, the other two also looked disoriented, so he assumed they hadn’t planned it.
Bo-Peep cursed behind him, yelling as if she were fighting the deafening noise of the clock. He turned to watch her right herself and grab another knife from the folds of her dress. Her sheep took off in a sprint toward him.
Something hit the side of the tower again, knocking all of them off balance again. Puss caught himself on a podium, glad that they seemed to be bolted to the floor so he could cling to them as gravity shifted and the floor shook.
Something whizzed past his ear.
“Stop aiming at my head!” Puss snapped back, wobbling as the tower creaked. “Are they with you?”
“What?!” She shrieked. “I thought they were with you!”
“Nope!”
Puss moved from podium to podium, grabbing onto them as he tried to get to the stairs.
Another chime. What was that? Five? Six?
Whatever was hitting the tower was coming from the leftmost side of it, judging by how he stumbled with each hit, where Kitty had chosen to look. He wasn’t sure if he could get to that side through the door behind Peep. The floor plans hadn’t been that up-to-date, so he would likely stand a better chance if he just went to the roof again.
Another knife embedded itself in the wall, this time having struck his hat, pinning it to a wooden frame beside him.
“Next time, Puss in Boots!” Peep yelled at him before she and her sheep rushed back through the door they had come through.
Puss grabbed his hat, stuck the knife between his teeth, and slowly but surely made it to the stairs as whatever was striking the tower continued its siege.
Behind him, several of the trinkets in the podiums had since fallen off, the glass shattering across the floor. He kept a watchful eye on a lantern that had yet to be shaken from the wall and made his way up the stairs. Another hit, the clattering of something hitting the floor. Another hit, the lantern shuddered, clanking against the wall. Another hit, Puss caught himself against the stairs. Another hit, he stared at the ceiling as the rocks above him crumbled and came down.