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His heart was gone.

His father had taken it: ripped open his waistcoat and shirt and chest panel and pulled the mechanical organ out carefully. The man was talking, but not to the puppet he was taking the heart from. “What a mess you’ve made. Still, the heart is intact, my son. I’ll take its arm too, once you’re well, to replace the basic one you have now.”

Geppetto was taking the heart to the carcass-puppet. The puppet’s sight was growing dim, but he could still see the creature where it was suspended in its web of light-beams, the violent red Ergo-power seeping from its joints which was so alike and unlike the puppet’s broken friend in the swamp graveyard. “Gem’ni?” he tried to whisper: his voice buzzed like a Venigni Works puppet. “Gem?”  There was no response. With much of his rapidly-draining power the puppet rolled to his side and saw the lantern that contained his friend…still attached to his belt, but crushed as though under a careless boot. If the puppet still had his heart it would have ached. “-phia,” he whispered, even more quietly. Some of the Ergo still lingering in his limbs was hers: she did not answer. Water seeped from his eyes.

His right arm was too weak to move, but his Legion arm still had power. He reached slowly, carefully, for the pouch where he kept most of the things he did not need to use in the middle of battle. Sophia’s pocket watch was there, and the star fragments: he felt his metal fingers close over a shape flattish and round and squeezed until—with a faint whine of gears—it crunched within his hand, accompanied by a clear twinkling noise that told him he had crushed star fragments too.

Make a wish, clever one, whispered in his ear, and the puppet did. 

The puppet awoke in a chair on a train with a blue butterfly sinking into his heart, as a voice in his ear whispered Geppetto’s puppet…We need your help.

***

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It was like when he fell in battle and Sophia’s power wound him back in time to the last Stargazer. But…slower. The world bled into being around him and the puppet heard gears whirring as his left arm twitched to life sooner than the rest of him. He was in the red chair in the workshop train where Sophia had first brought him to life, but clearly he’d been brought back with more than just his memories. His head was tilted forward, and he could see that the hair that fell across his vision was long and grey: he was dressed not in a simple white blouse, but a shirt stained with red and blue blood, under a brown waistcoat: the arm on his left was Aegis, not a simple steel imitation of a human limb. Tucked through the elbow of his right arm was the spear haft he and Eugenie had modified, and when he raised his head he saw the reassuring glow of the salamander dagger blade affixed to the end. He stood up slowly, feeling like the air had been replaced with thick tarry oil, and carefully took a step towards the open door ahead of him. 

Ah, there you are! I’ve been looking all over for you.

Sophia’s sweet voice, the one he had been sure he would never hear again. The puppet switched his weapon to his left hand so the right could touch his cheek--yes, there it was again, spilling out of his eyes. What was happening to him? There was a greenish glow on the floor ahead, and his breath seized in his chest as he patted at his belt and realized that it was missing something very important. How had he forgotten? He was a terrible friend!

I see they got Gemini too…we have to hurry. My name is Sophia. Please come to Hotel Krat, and I will explain what’s happening. Gemini, please escort him here.

“Sophia?” The puppet tried to say, and had to make himself start breathing again so that his voice had any volume. “Sophia?”

Yes. Let’s get you out of there for now, all right? There may be things that can help. If the weapon you have doesn’t suit you, you can take one of those swords over there. The streets aren’t safe.

The puppet bypassed the workbench entirely, and instead set his feet and dragged open the reluctant door. He looked out and saw Krat Central Station…but very differently from how he had seen it last. All the bodies on the floor looked human, and one of them looked fresh. Looking further down the platform he could see a police puppet moving with steps that were uneven but did not show the signs of being controlled by a carcass. 

“Destination: Hotel Krat. Recommend escaping from current location.” The voice came from Gemini’s lamp, but it was buzzy and flat and not like his friend at all. 

“Gemini?” The puppet whispered, to no answer. More water rolled down his cheeks. “Sophia, did you really send me so far back?” No answer. She hadn’t spoken after the train the first time either, did she? Had waking him up drained her power? The puppet pulled the door closed again and sat, shaky, on one of the crates nearby. He closed his eyes and tried to focus. Ah, having feelings was not half so marvelous as the broken puppet in the swamp seemed to think it was! He scrubbed at the wetness on his cheeks, frustrated, and decided to take stock of his current inventory. He always did so before setting off into a new area, and the thought of the routine soothed him now. He went to the bench and shoved the swords to the side, laying his spear on top. That was the first thing he had. Hooked to his belt still was his pulse cell, and he also had a couple throwing cells and thermite bombs there for quick access. He hesitantly emptied out his belt pouch and a mangled piece of metal that had once been a pocket watch clinked against the surface, followed by a shower of star fragments and the pieces of Venigni’s Ergo wave device. The bigger star-piece he had found was still there too, the one that looked like a butterfly’s chrysalis. (The puppet knew a lot about butterflies. Sometimes he would go back to the hotel and all the humans would be asleep, and he would read to pass the time until they were awake to help with whatever repairs or upgrades he needed. Lady Antonia had two books with facts about insects, and while neither of them had facts about dimensional butterflies, apparently there were non-dimensional ones that were quite plain and common that the books could talk about a good bit.) He had some recovery ampoules, the acid spear-head he switched out for the salamander dagger blade when he wanted, and the tyrant-murdering dagger blade he had attached to his rapier hilt. 

“Recommend escaping from current location,” Gemini’s mangled voice said again. 

The puppet squared his shoulders and began neatly to reset his supplies on his belt. His metal heart pounded, warm, in his chest; he rested his palm over it and was reassured. However it was that she had done it, or he had done it, or a star had done it, he had another chance: he did not intend to squander it. Raising his chin, he retraced his steps with the intention of going into the workshop car behind the chair and finding supplies…but he stopped abruptly when he saw what was beside the chair. An ominous black case with a hand and workshop symbol on the front of it. The puppet felt cold. He approached it slowly, and lowered it to its back. Setting his weapon to the side he broke the case’s lock like he did for chests he found in the city, and inside he saw the pitiful grey form tightly folded. “Carlo?” he whispered: the corpse-puppet did not stir. The puppet hesitantly touched its shoulder and tried to shake it. The corpse-puppet still showed no signs of life, though its metal feet twitched. The puppet felt a sensation that he thought was called ‘sick’. Yes, he felt sick. “This is your love, Father?” he said roughly, but of course there was no Geppetto to respond. He left the case for a moment, and broke through the door behind his chair. He took Geppetto's tools, and returned to the other car. Setting his jaw in determination he pulled the figure from the case as gently as possible and slung it over his left shoulder. With his right he reclaimed his spear. There was a hot fire near the shoreline, was there not? He nodded his head one more time, and set off.

***

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Compared to what he had faced since, the puppets in the city near the station were all terribly weak. The puppet remembered how difficult it had seemed to fight them the first time, but now he could break them all even with a limp body tossed over his shoulder. He made it to the path by the shoreline, and saw the ringing phone that was currently playing something other than Arlecchino’s voice. Gently he laid the corpse-puppet down on the stairs, and went to destroy the tall puppet near the outlook where he had found the legion calibre and Stalker gear buried from a cryptic vessel clue. The fire, between two buildings, was indeed hot.

It didn’t seem enough to just put the corpse-puppet in the fire. The puppet took its heart, its P-organ that was similar to but much simpler than his own, and crushed it in Aegis’ steel fist. It showered golden sparks as he did, and he hoped that wherever he was right now Geppetto did not somehow sense it. He also carefully detached its legs at the knee joint, and hurled each into the sea. The upper legs followed, and the puppet felt a twinge of conscience: Lady Antonia had explained what “desecration of corpses” had meant when he saw it on the wanted poster for the Black Rabbit Brotherhood. Still, he steeled his heart: it was their father who had committed the desecration first. He lowered the corpse-puppet into the fire, stepping back as it started to lick at his own clothes: with a whispered apology he tossed two of his thermite bombs on top of the figure. 

He stood and watched for a long time as the fire consumed the form Geppetto had built for replacing him.

When the grey flesh was all devoured by the flames, there were left bits of metal among the human bones. The puppet used his spear haft to rake those towards himself, and threw them into the ocean as well. “Be at peace, Carlo,” was all he could think to say. Sophia really had looked peaceful as he took her Ergo and let her physical body dissolve without it; and the nameless corpse-puppet had seemed far from peace, controlled by rage and by Geppetto’s light-beams that directed him to attack. Gepetto said the puppet had much of Carlo’s personality, if not his memories. The puppet would not have liked it if his father used his dead body to mindlessly attack another, under the technician’s control. He hoped whatever parts of Carlo were missing from the puppet’s heart could rest now. 

“Optimal location for observing destination: Hotel Krat,” Gemini’s buzzing voice said. 

“Yes,” the puppet agreed. He was desperate to be there: things made sense at Hotel Krat the way they did nowhere else, and he had dearly missed Lady Antonia after she died. 

***

When the parade master puppet landed in front of him the puppet looked up at it fearlessly, dagger in hand. “Are you one of the messengers Romeo was talking about?” he asked clearly. “If you are, then talk to me, don’t attack me.”

The parade master…said something? It made sounds that had a rhythm like speech. But the puppet could not understand it, and without waiting for understanding the parade master threw itself at Geppetto’s puppet, belly-first, with all of its weight. The puppet darted away from the attack and performed the Stalker’s salute with his modified dagger. “I suppose not,” he said, and got to work.

***

Inside Hotel Krat, the puppet searched Sophia with his eyes as she approached. No matter how carefully he looked, there was nothing to hint that she wasn’t really there—even the sound of her footsteps was nothing but real. He bowed his head when she reached him, filled with bitter-sweet happiness. “Hello, Sophia. I am glad to see you.”

“And I, you,” she said. There was something that sounded a little like surprise in her gentle voice. “I have been waiting for you; I searched all over the city of Krat to find you. You must have questions…Geppetto will have answers, but we will need to find him first.”

No answers the puppet wanted to hear. But there seemed to be no point in mixing things up and creating a confusion yet, so the puppet hid all his tangled feelings and tried to look as serene as Sophia. “I understand. He’s not here?”

“He was last seen on Elysion Boulevard,” Sophia said, her smooth forehead creasing. “All of Krat is dangerous for humans right now, and that neighborhood is one of the scariest.”

“Then why did he go?”

Sophia tilted her head and smiled a little. “To fetch you, he said. Antonia tried to keep him from leaving and he told her about the special fighting puppet he had been working on. He thought he could retrieve the last parts you needed and get to you without being hurt, but now you and I know that I had to be the one to wake you up, and he has been gone too long. You should find him, and then we can explain more.” Her gaze fell on the lamp on the puppet’s belt and she looked worried again. “Look at Gemini…I think he’s in shock.”

“Gemini is fine,” the cricket puppet tried to say.

“That’s proof you’re broken,” Sophia scolded. “The real Gemini isn’t so…calm.”

“How do you know Gemini?” the puppet asked. He hadn’t asked it the first time…thinking about it now, he really had been so simple and incurious then. Sophia didn’t seem surprised by the question, fortunately, but answered with the same kind smile.

“He was my sister’s lamp. She…disappeared, years ago, and so did Gemini.” She laid a hand over her chest. “I knew he was alive, at least. My sister…well, she was fond of Gemini. He always had a lot more personality than most Monad Lamps. I’m no inventor, but perhaps I can repair him—or perhaps in time he’ll fix himself?” (The puppet wondered at this news. She knew Gemini was alive because she could sense Ergo, perhaps? He didn’t know anything about her sister, but he didn’t think he’d heard or read about her before.) “You should talk to the others here: there is a weaponsmith who can help with your gear, and Lady Antonia will want to meet you too. Oh, but first—take this pocketwatch.” 

The puppet took it. It was solid and real in his hands, and looked just like the one hung around Sophia’s neck. How had she done that? He burned with curiosity, but as glad as he was to see Sophia he wanted to talk to Antonia and Eugénie too. He tucked the watch away in his pouch, nodding as Sophia explained its use, and tried to keep looking calm and peaceful. “Thank you, Sophia,” he said.

“You are welcome,” she answered. “Go on. Be careful, clever one.”

Eugénie was looking at him, the puppet could tell. He went to her first, and she rocked back on her stool and stared at him with fascination. “I heard about you from Geppetto, but to see you in person—wow!”

“What did he tell you about me?” the puppet asked.

“Well, just that he had been working on an advanced prototype puppet when the Frenzy hit,” she said. She was looking at his gear first, her eyes skating over the bloodstains, before returning to inspect his face. “A puppet who could serve as a Stalker. He came here about a month after the Frenzy started, then left again a few days ago, saying he was going to retrieve you. Is he here?”

The puppet shook his head. “I woke up in a workshop without anyone else there.”

Eugénie squinted, pushing up her glasses with the back of her gloved hand. “Huh. I guess Master Geppetto underestimates his own genius, and didn’t realize you were ready to function already.” She hopped down off her stool and went to a cabinet, saying, “Here—Master Geppetto left this with me. You should take it.” He did, and took a moment to quickly swap it out for Aegis, trying to get re-accustomed to the feel of a Puppet String without any upgrades. “The sound of it alone,” Eugénie sighed. “That craftsmanship comes only from the hands of Geppetto. You must be something else—a custom arm from the Head of the Workshop Union is not just any accessory!”

The puppet nodded, trying not to think about Geppetto’s craftsmanship. He lay two of the pieces of his equipment she had been looking at across her workbench. “I salvaged this for a spear haft—I want to use it for this.” He pulled out his dagger and showed it off under her sharp eyes. “For more reach. Can you adjust the balance to suit me more? With the other as a model? I will be using it for stabbing rather than slashing, though.”

“Sure,” she said, sitting up very straight on the stool and taking the dagger from him without waiting for permission. “The grooves here…you used an Enigma Assembly Tool? Should make the swap pretty easy. I can’t make a big change to the haft without a crank but I can certainly balance it differently enough to help.” She adjusted her glasses again. “Ah, I forgot to introduce myself: I’m Eugénie, from the Workshop Union.”

“Thank you, Eugénie,” the puppet said, and she blinked at him. “I will come back—I have to greet Lady Antonia.”

“Oh, of course. Lady Antonia has been incredibly kind to us: I don’t think any of us would still be intact without her offering the Hotel as refuge. I should have your upgrade done in about an hour.”

***

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“Unexpected guests are welcome, even without a reservation. I am Antonia, and this is my hotel. Welcome!”

The puppet bowed slightly. Scales had not spread across most of her face the way they did near the end, but from the way she squinted her eyes he suspected she could not see him very well. “Thank you. It does not…bother you, that I came through the hotel security even though I am a puppet?”

“Not at all,” she said firmly. “I already knew there were puppets unaffected by the Frenzy—I’m sure you saw my wonderful assistant Polendina at the front desk, performing his duties as reliably as ever. For that matter, I knew the moment we met that you were Geppetto’s creation. He may have a few loose screws, but his skills are undiminished.” Her face clouded, and she turned to the side. “It’s a shame,” she said more quietly. “He took off for Elysion Boulevard and hasn’t come back. I cautioned him that it was too dangerous to leave the hotel, especially since Venigni never returned after leaving weeks ago…but then he never really listened to me about such things.” She was smiling, but it was…bitter? Yes, that was the word. “If he doesn’t return soon perhaps we will need to start working on a coffin.”

“I will be going to Elysion Boulevard soon to look for him,” the puppet said, and her smile lost some of that bitterness, actually widening a bit.

“What a good boy. Oh, that reminds me—there’s actually something I was keeping for Geppetto…it was going to go to him together with a long story, but now I actually think it's better off with you.” She started to wheel herself towards the bookshelf behind the piano, but her arms shook. The puppet took hold of the handles for her chair and started to push when she nodded that he could. She directed them to a drawer under one of the shelves, and carefully pulled out a folded set of clothing. “I don’t know if what you’re in now can be salvaged, but you can give them to Polendina and change into this instead—if anyone can launder them, he can.”

The puppet nodded. Polendina had saved a lot of clothes for him, the first time around, though even he found some of them unsalvageable. “I will. I have to get my weapons from Eugénie after I change, and then I’ll be off.”

“Please find that old man,” she sighed. “But be careful out there, will you?”

“I will,” the puppet lied gently.

***

Polendina was as professional and reserved as ever. The puppet tried to observe him: it seemed that puppets subject to the Grand Covenant could sense those who were not, based on his own experience and what the broken puppet in the swamp said. As much as he tried, Geppetto’s puppet could not do the same. He stepped behind the desk to exchange his filthy clothes for the clean uniform (because Eugénie always protested if he changed out in the open) then headed for the second floor. There was a spot where he would sit and read—yes, it had none of the things he’d left there in the first time, but it was otherwise the same. He opened one of the cabinets under a bookshelf and tucked Aegis there. Geppetto might have questions, if he saw it too soon. After he went to the wall that hid the path to the golden coin tree behind it, but no matter how he poked and prodded and investigated he could not figure out how to open it. It hadn’t been a full hour yet by any means, but he returned to Eugénie anyway for lack of anything else to do. She was still working on the spear haft and didn’t look up as he came close. He took the discarded rapier handle and spent a moment using his Enigma Tool to seat the acid spearhead in it. When he was done, the weaponsmith was looking at him over her glasses. 

“If you want to test anything out or practice your skills you can step out to the garden. The Stalkers captured a puppet to use for training—it’s rudimentary but better than just a sawdust bag.” She saw something in the puppet’s face that he didn’t know was there, since she said, “Don’t look at me like that. Everyone hates puppets, but I know what side you’re on.”

The puppet knew that humans hated puppets. What he didn’t know was: “There were Stalkers here?”

“Sure.” She lifted the spear to her eye level, sighting down the length of it clinically. “At first. There weren’t many survivors from the Workshop Tower, but we couldn’t agree on where to go. I wanted to come here: most of the others thought they could go to Krat Central Station or the Cathedral. Some of the survivors were Stalkers who had helped us, so they split up too. The Lion and the Kingfisher came here. Kingfisher left again soon after, trying to see if anyone else needed help. Lion stayed until Venigni said he was going to go to his factory: he volunteered to escort him as far as the gates, because he needed to look for his brother.” She wrinkled her nose. “The Black Rabbit Brotherhood also comes and throws things at the windows, sometimes, but the security system has kept them out so far.”

He nodded. He could tell she wanted to return to her task, so he did as suggested and went to practice with his new acid dagger.

He was quite focused when she finally finished and came outside to tell him so. Coming out of an attempt to practice a fatal strike after a rolling dodge, he saw her in the doorway. She was looking at him admiringly, as though he were a particularly ingenious weapon. “You really are something. Geppetto designed you well. Speaking of things that are designed well!” She passed him the newly assembled spear, and he tested the balance of it, making a few measured lunges under her watchful eye. When he was done he saluted her with it and nodded.

“Thank you, Eugénie. It will work well.” He tucked it up against his side and frowned as a thought occurred to him. He carefully tried to think of a way to approach the question without any mention of things that didn’t make sense unless you knew time had rewound. “If there…Stalkers hate puppets. I am a puppet. If one attacks me, I cannot let myself be killed, but they may think they are just protecting others. What should I do?” The Donkey, he thought. The Donkey had been right about a lot of things.

Eugénie looked taken aback. “That’s…that’s a question for someone like Master Venigni or Master Geppetto. Or even Lady Antonia. I’m just a weaponsmith, you know.” She hesitated, and he waited for her patiently. “The Stalkers…a lot of good people died in the Workshop Tower collapse. Or right after, in the Frenzy. If there’s any left…they’re probably like the Rabbits, and not good people. Or just cowards who fled instead of fought.” Her jaw shifted like she was gritting her teeth, and she looked at the boxing puppet target like she meant to throw a grenade at it. “The Stalker Alidoro was one of the ones who rescued us, and I told him that I really thought Hotel Krat would be safe. I was one of the techs who worked on the defence system when I was an apprentice, you know. The Hound was a tremendously skilled Stalker! If he hasn’t come here, he probably didn’t make it either. If someone that talented could not do it….” she sniffed, and pushed up her glasses with the back of her hand again. “Anyway. Of course you should try and explain that Geppetto made you so you’re safe, and a reasonable Stalker might listen. You don’t act as…mindlessly brutal, as a Frenzied puppet. Anyone with half a brain should be able to tell you’re telling the truth! If they still try and kill you after that, you killing them is probably better for Krat than the reverse.”

The puppet nodded, still thinking about it, and bowed to her again. “I understand. Is there a good way to incapacitate humans without killing them? If it was a puppet, I can just take off their arms and legs and there isn’t much they can do.”

She shrugged. “We aren’t as simple as puppets. You could hit a human on the head and knock them out—or it might kill them. Getting hit with electricity also sometimes works and sometimes kills you.”

He needed to get his electric coil stick again anyway. The puppet saluted her once more and started planning his route.

***

Chapter Text

***

“Hey, hey, be careful!” Gemini’s voice almost made the puppet’s eyes well up again. He realized he had been secretly afraid that whatever had allowed the cricket puppet to repair himself the first time would not be so helpful this time around. But his friend’s voice was as clear and lively as it ever had been as he added, “The Black Rabbit Brothehood…ugh, I hate these guys. But! Don’t be alarmed! My name’s Gemini. I’m here to help, though I suppose there won’t be much time for talking until we’re someplace safer than this.”

“Gemini,” the puppet said, happy just to say it. “Gemini, you don’t talk much to people other than me, right?”

“Well I’ve been a little under the weather, haven’t I?” he chirped. “But yeah, you’re not wrong. Monad lamps are meant to be guides for the person wearing them, not everybody in the area. Not that I can’t chime in if I feel like I need to! But you seem to have things covered, right pal?”

Maybe. It was easier to go through Elysion Boulevard now that he knew where he was going. There were delays, certainly: he made a habit of not being the first one to attack any puppet he encountered, in case one of them was a messenger the King’s Ergo wave recording had spoke about (either none were, or the message was very different from what he would have thought), and he also called out at most of the lit windows rather than only the ones that were opened. Many of them did not answer, but a few did. He introduced himself simply as a Stalker, and most of them were eager to hear news of the situation in Krat. Some of them did ask for things: often it was items he could not get, especially fresh foods, but he promised to keep an eye out for supply boxes that might have such things. Several windows had children who asked for new toys or books, and that was an easy wish to grant. There was more than one toy or book store on the Boulevard, and the puppet picked through the ones that were least destroyed and found a lot of things that made the children very happy. He observed that as chatty as Gemini was with him, he never spoke up during those interactions…but then, maybe he was just worried about the response to him as a puppet. He turned down most rewards that were offered to him for his small services, but one person gave him a record and he just had to accept that one—a new song! One he hadn’t heard yet! And he did need to start getting his electric coil stick upgraded…. ”Time to visit the hotel again,” he said to Gemini, and made for it with all reasonable haste.

He presented the electric coil stick weapon to Eugénie along with a handful of Hidden Moonstones, and she looked at him over his glasses. “This will take some time; why don’t you get changed?”

The puppet looked down at his clothes, which had very little of their original dark blue still visible. It was all oil-black and dirt-brown. “I already changed once this morning,” he said mournfully.

“Uh-huh, and you’ve been working hard since then.” She began the work of detaching the weapon head from the handle so that she could fit it in the device that imbued moonstones into a weapon. “If you want to be trustworthy it will help if you don’t look like you’ve been through a war zone. You’ve got time, so why not?” She raised her eyebrows. “And…why not clean yourself while you’re at it. That nice hair and skin Master Geppetto made so carefully is as filthy as your clothes.”

The puppet sighed. He did not particularly like washing himself, especially his hair—it was unnerving having water near his face like that. He supposed she was right, though, so he obediently said, “Yes, Eugénie,” and followed her suggestion.

When he was clean he reverently put his new record on the gramophone and sat at its base to take in the music. The words were in a language he did not know, but he liked the sound of it: it was a rather up-beat, energetic song with a lot of the sound that Lady Antonia said was made by an ‘accordian’. When the song finished he put it on again, and went to see how Eugénie was progressing on his weapon. It was at one of the stages where she was just watching several dials, and she nodded at him with approval as he approached. “I think that’s much better! You don’t look like a ruffian now. I am making good progress: as soon as it finishes absorbing, it will be good to go. I’ll put it back on the handle it came from, unless you have other ideas.”

“The handle is fine,” he said, and went over to the crafting machine to use the first couple legion calibers he had found to begin updating the puppet string. He was so focused that he almost did not notice Eugénie approaching: she stood to the side and watched his work quietly. When he was done she made a thinking sort of sound.

“Gosh, you’re good at that. I’d say that I’d love to see your blueprints, but I am not good enough at puppetry to understand them, probably. Master Geppetto’s work is on another level: Master Venigni might make more puppets than him, but Geppetto is an artist.”

Adjustments finished, the puppet straightened, rolling his shoulders back and squinting as a grey strand fell across his eyes. Should he ask? He would ask. “Eugénie, would you be willing to tie my hair back for me?”

“I’m sorry?”

He demonstrated gathering it at the back of his head with his skin-covered hand, then flexed the hand of the Puppet String demonstratively.  “To keep it out of my face?”

“Oh! I see, the strands would get stuck in the exposed joints if you tried—yes, give me a moment.” She returned to her station, the puppet trailing behind, and pulled a cord out of one of the many tiny drawers under her workbench. “Here! Turn around and I’ll get it for you.” He did, widening his stance to bring his head in her reach, and took in the strange sensation of warmth-emitting human hands in his hair. “I wonder,” she murmured as she gathered strands, “maybe I should make a glove for your uncovered mechanical hand? Could be useful for tasks like this. I’ve…been experimenting, a little, with glove-making. I could give it a try.”

The puppet had a thought, and turned once she’d released his hair. “Oh, do you think you could make me a mask? Stalkers wear one. It would help me look like a Stalker.” And it might be easier to hide his reactions from Geppetto, if his face was covered by a mask.

Eugénie looked regretful. “That might be beyond my skills. You could try asking Lady Antonia? A lot of wealthy ladies know how to do that sort of thing. Embroidery, and all.”

“I will ask.” He felt the queue his hair was now tied in, shook his head and smiled when nothing went in front of his eyes. “Thank you.”

It took a little while to find Lady Antonia, but eventually he found her in the small office on the second floor. He presented her with his request and she thought about it for a long minute before smiling her lopsided smile. “My hands aren’t as deft as they once were, I’m afraid, but with Miss Eugénie’s help we might be able to get something done. Could you be a dear and ask Polendina to show you where my sewing basket is? Then bring it here.”

He did as he was told, and Polendina seemed pleased that Antonia was asking for such a thing. The puppet wished the butler felt comfortable enough to confide in him, but he told himself to be patient as he brought the ‘sewing basket’ to Antonia. She started sifting through it as soon as he did, and he looked at the things she wasn’t looking at. There was a curious little cushion that he thought was meant to be shaped  like a sort of fruit, bristling with dozens of tiny spears embedded in it. He pulled two of them out and looked at them curiously. He felt Lady Antonia’s eyes on him, and held the two bits of metal up to show her and clashed them a couple times against each other in imitation of swordplay.

She laughed until she coughed, then chuckled more quietly once she’d regained her breath. “Yes, they are as sharp as any weapon, aren’t they?” She pulled one of the longer ones out of the cushion and held it up for the puppet to see. “This is a needle—see the eye at the end? The hole, that is. One pulls the thread through it, then sticks the pointy end of the needle in the cloth: that draws the thread through, so the fabric is attached.” She reached for his wrist, the one with skin, and ran her fingers over the end of his sleeve. “You can probably see the stitches if you look closely.”

The puppet had to cross his eyes to really see the stitches when he brought the sleeve up in front of his face, but he could tell after a moment what she meant. Based on that, he correctly identified the ‘thread’ in the basket, and pulled one out to receive Antonia’s nod that he’d guessed right. “But some of your needles have no holes,” he noted, looking at the ones in his hands again. Instead of an ‘eye’ they had small flat heads.

“Those are pins,” she corrected with tolerant amusement. She took two little scraps out of the sewing basket, and it took a few tries with her hands’ trembling but she eventually succeeded in showing how to use the ‘pins’. “They hold the pieces together, see? So your work doesn’t move while you are stitching.”

The puppet was fascinated. To think so many steps went into making clothes such as the ones he wore (and destroyed) every day! He supposed he had assumed they were made in a process like Venigni’s factory, with machines making the pieces and attaching them together. “You will make me a mask out of fabric?” he asked, increasingly excited. He had worn several masks since he was first awakened, but none of them had been his. 

“Not quite.” Antonia held up her hands, letting them shake, and smiled crookedly again. “These old hands can’t do that any more, I’m afraid. But if I can draw up a rough pattern, your weaponsmith friend can surely cut the pieces out of leather and sew them together for you. What animal did you want your mask to be?”

The puppet touched his hand to his lamp. “A cricket, please.”

“Aww, pal,” Gemini chirped, sounding touched. Antonia’s eyebrows raised at his voice, but she nodded as politely as she would to anyone else and laid out some pieces of thin paper on the desk top. She beckoned the puppet closer so she could use a strip of cloth with lines on it to measure his face in several different directions, and then shakily she started drawing careful lines on the paper, stopping a few times to measure something again. Once she had multiple pieces drawn, she had the puppet cut them out with a tool that reminded him of the Nameless Puppet’s sword. She arranged the cut pieces in an overlapping way, and the puppet began to be able to imagine what it would look like.

“A cricket,” she murmured to herself at one point in the process. “Wasn’t there a rather famous Stalker with a cricket mask? …well, I suppose if they’re not around to claim it any more it’s up for the taking.” Once she had the pieces as she liked them, she put them in her lap and gestured at the door. “Wheel me to the lift, child, and we’ll take this to consult with our weaponsmith. But I think she’ll be able to do it, won’t you?”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed happily. “Eugénie is very good at making things.”

***

Leaving the hotel gates, newly upgraded coil stick in hand, Gemini burst out: “I’m so touched! You want to be Cricket because of me?”

“You’re my closest friend,” the puppet pointed out, and Gemini chittered wordlessly to himself. The puppet made a decision. “Gemini, I want to tell you some things that are very important, and very strange. I want to tell you because I trust you. But it could be very, very bad if other people find out what I’m going to tell you. Will you promise not to tell anyone?”

“Your secrets are safe with me,” he said. “And I’m a puppet, so you know that’s the truth.”

Hmm. “Have you tried lying? So that you know you can’t?”

“What?”

“Try it. Say, ah…say ‘I am a real living cricket who eats plants’.” (The puppet had read a lot about crickets in the same books as butterflies)

“I’m a real living cricket who eats plants,” Gemini parroted, then chittered while his lamp flared bright acidic green. “Wait, what? What?!”

The puppet nodded, satisfied that he had guessed correctly. “I thought so. You have an awakened ego, so the Grand Covenant can’t bind you any more.”

“Wait, ‘awakened ego’?” His voice went distant. “Why does that sound…sort of familiar….”

“So you can lie,” he summarized. “But I will believe you anyway and tell you my secrets.”

He did: not every detail, but the broad sketch of what he had been through before the major rewinding of time. He talked about Carcasses, and alchemists, and Sophia, and Ergo waves, and nameless puppets: and he talked about Geppetto, though he still left out details. Even leaving them out, they were nearly at the Alchemist’s Bridge before he stopped talking. Gemini’s voice was staticky again as he said, “It’s all so…it’s not that I think you’re lying, pal. Everything I’ve seen tells me you’re a good guy, and besides, what kind of purpose would such a crazy lie have? But still, it…it sounds crazy! You sound crazy! What do you mean Geppetto caused the Frenzy?! All those people who died…it just doesn’t make sense!”

The puppet nodded soberly. He took a cogwheel from his pocket and threw it up at the hanging figure the Brotherhood had left with the ‘Purge Puppets’ sign, and scooped up the key that fell to the pavement. “I know. I wish it was a lie. But, just wait a moment: you will see. We will meet Geppetto and the Donkey here, and my father will tell me to go to City Hall, and then you’ll know.” He tried to make his voice hard and sharp, like that of the rabbit Stalker with the red scarf, and finished: “You cannot let any of this slip to Geppetto. Not a word. Not a hint. Do you understand?”

“Got it,” Gemini said. His voice was subdued, and he didn’t call the puppet ‘Pal’. “My lips are sealed.”

***

Chapter Text

“Donkey,” the puppet called out when he was still a ways away from the carriage. The mask turned to face him, and he did the Stalker’s salute with his electric coil stick. 

“I’m here for the old man, Bastard,” he growled. “Get lost.”

“You think this is the most helpful thing you could be doing?” The puppet asked neutrally.

“I’d say so, yeah!” The Donkey slung his weapon over his shoulder and started stomping towards the puppet. “This is Giuseppe Geppetto! Don’t you know who invented the puppets? What, do you really think they just all went mad at once by coincidence? They had to be under orders! And who…better to…” his voice trailed off and he stopped, his hand tightening on the handle of his weapon. “Wait. I know you….”

“If you think him mad enough to cause something like the Frenzy,” the puppet said quickly, hoping they were far enough away that his father could not hear, “–do you really think being threatened by a random Sweeper would be enough to make him stray from his course?”

“...and what would you know, Devil’s Puppet,” he said with silken menace, and began stepping forward once more. The puppet backed up, glad for every step they took away from the carriage. “You can’t fool me. You just want to protect your creator!”

“Who will call off the Frenzy if he’s dead, fool,” the puppet hissed. 

The Donkey did not listen.

The first time he lived this moment, the puppet had been transfixed by the hot red blood on his hands and had not seen Geppetto as he exited the carriage. Now he observed every minute twitch of expression as his father saw the puppet, saw the fallen Stalker…the man’s gaze flicked up to the puppet’s head and saw the grey hair, and when they dropped again they were wiped of everything except reserved warmth shielding…other things. “Finally, we meet, son.”

The puppet slightly bowed his head and fought down emotions that were acid and fire and electricity all at once. He tried to meet Geppetto’s eyes with the incurious obedience of a simple vessel. “Hello,” he said, and was surprised at the evenness of his own voice.

Geppetto held out his arms and put his hands on the puppet’s shoulders. “It’s a dream come true, seeing you like this.” (Was it warmth in his voice? Suspicion? Annoyance? Joy? The last time the puppet had felt his father’s hands they were tearing out his heart, and he clung to his last drops of composure so fiercely he felt like a half-real being, detached from his own body.) Geppetto looked down at the body of the Donkey (was he still breathing? The puppet had tried…) and his face made every show of regret. “I understand why people may despise me,” he said roughly. “I invented puppets, after all. I should take responsibility as their maker. But in order for me to do that, I need to take care of the puppets at city hall.” His hands dropped to his sides, and the puppet almost sighed at the relief of it–before wrenching the impulse under control with frightened force. That would undeniably be giving his father reason to suspect. “Won’t you help me, son?” he said, and did not wait for the puppet to respond before pressing a tool into his hands. “Take this, you will find it useful.”

“You want me to kill all the puppets at city hall?” the puppet asked politely. “I have been helping people on the Boulevard. There were signs—”

“I want to hear all about your experiences,” Geppetto said, like a man who didn’t want it at all, “but now is not the time. The Stalker came at me through the bridge door–take his key and use it to proceed. Then you can get rid of those frenzied puppets that have seized the hall. We’ll catch up at Hotel Krat when you’re done.” He hesitated, then stroked the puppet’s head; he had not done that the first time. (observing the changed hair, the puppet realized.) “Be a good boy for me.”

“I will,” the puppet lied.

Geppetto turned down an escort to the hotel. Once he was out of sight off the bridge, the puppet pulled the Donkey into the carriage—was he still breathing? It was very hard to tell. If he was, he would not make it out on the street unconscious if a frenzied puppet found him. When he was done he re-shouldered his weapon and began to make his way towards City Hall. Only once he had used the key on the gate did Gemini finally speak up. “Well, pal,” he said weakly, “If you want to say ‘I told you so’ now is the time!”

“So you believe me?” The puppet was relieved. No matter what had happened in his first time at life, Gemini had been at his side for all of it. He hated to imagine doing this without him. 

“How can I not? But since you are telling the truth, then, well—” the cricket sounded distressed: “–then the rest of it—the Frenzy—”

“You see why you have to keep quiet about it?” The puppet asked, reassembling the Stargazer in the street on their way to City Hall. “I have to figure this out. I have to save as many people as possible.”

Gemini’s voice regained some of its confidence as he replied, “You mean we have to figure this out, buddy. But let’s put a pin in that for now: it seems like you’ve got to focus on fighting for now.”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed. “The Watchman is a hard fight. Can you listen carefully while I fight him, please? It seems like they are trying to speak, and the Puppet King said he sent messengers, so I want to know if he tries to tell me something. I don’t think he will, though. I think whether he is controlled by the Frenzy or not, the Watchman hates the whole world for not saving his friends.”

“You’ve got it, pal. My ears are peeled.”

***

Whatever the Watchman had said, neither of them had understood it. Once it was defeated, the puppet reassembled the courtyard Stargazer and then sat on the stones beside it and thought furiously. 

“Something wrong?” Gemini asked.

The puppet nodded. Just like the first time, he had instinctively salvaged pieces from the Watchman that seemed most useful; but this time it told him he had a huge problem. “Yes. This core: Geppetto needs it for my heart. But he already installed it in my heart, last time I did this. I have lots of Ergo Quartz upgrades too. As soon as I get back to the hotel, he will want to install this…and he will find out that I have it already.”

“Oof. I see the problem.” Gemini chirped thoughtfully to himself for a while while the puppet held his head in his hands. “...don’t suppose you can un-install it, could you? …nah, that’s probably silly, you said it’s part of your heart!”

“...wait.” The puppet sat up, and looked at the core in his hand. He almost crushed it, but then thought that it might be useful somehow: instead he stood up and went to the bench where the Watchman had made its memory display, and carefully hid the core away in one of the trinkets there. “I can say I installed it myself, though. I was made with the skills of a technician, I think Geppetto will believe it. I will have to lie very very well, but even though he made me able to lie he doesn’t think of me as a real person…I think I will be able to trick him. The Quartz…that would be harder to understand.”

“Can you uninstall that?” 

“Not by myself,” the puppet said, increasingly sure of his course of action. He tucked the overcharged battery in his pouch along with the Watchman’s Ergo, and pushed back his sleeves. “But I have an idea. Let’s go back not too fast, though, to be sure it’s believable I installed it myself.” It had taken him longer to defeat the Watchman last time, too. The puppet returned to the smaller courtyard outside the City Hall main entrance and started carefully dragging one of the corpses to the side. He would line them all up, so they weren't just left sprawled in the streets, and then he would take the baby puppet to the blind woman in the quarantine zone, and then he would hope that his guess was right and return to the hotel in a not-so-usual way.

Chapter Text

***

After coming back through Elysion Boulevard, the puppet stopped outside the door to the hotel and looked carefully up at the windows, and at the walls to the left and right. There: to the right. He positioned himself precisely, then aimed at the weakness he had spotted near the top and fired off the puppet string. Gemini buzzed in static surprise as they were dragged through the air, and the puppet disengaged the string at the top of the arc. It got him close enough to hook both his hands over the top of the wall, and he pulled himself up and rolled over the top…he landed in some bushes, which made his impact softer but didn’t let him land on his feet. He struggled out of them, brushing leaves off his trousers, while the cricket said, “Nice landing, pal. What was so…huh. Well, isn’t that a sight?”

The puppet approached the tree respectfully. All the branches glinted with yellow light, and he let his eyes flit among them until he found a solid golden mote. As he was by now used to, the tree only ripened a handful of fruits at a time, but he plucked them carefully one by one. “It’s a Gold Coin Fruit Tree,” he explained to his companion. “The fruits have a lot of healing properties. They can be used in cures and medicines.”

“How the heck did it get here?”

“Sophia said it was a person called a Listener,” he said soberly. “This one has been here a long time, but alchemists want to be able to make more by finding more Listeners and tormenting them.”

“That was a person?! Isn’t it…disrespectful, then? To pluck the fruit.”

The puppet shook his head. “Sophia said that the Listeners would like to help. To know that their sacrifice at least wasn’t for nothing.”

“Well then.” With a burst of static like a human clearing their throat, Gemini said, “Thank you, Madam Listener, for letting my pal here have some of your fruit.” More quietly he continued, “is that the only reason you came here?”

“Not quite.” The puppet sat on the grass under the sweep of the tree’s branches, and rested his right hand on its bark. “There is a statue at the Grand Exhibition—do you know it?”

“The Saintess of Mercy Statue was designed by some of Krat’s finest technicians, and can be seen installed in her own beautiful gallery at the Grand Exhibition—definitely worth a visit when you are at the hall to see Krat’s miraculous technology,” Gemini said in his tour-guide tone. 

“Yes,” the puppet said much more briefly. “It can…reset puppet systems. Sometimes, when I was picking the gold coin fruit, I felt something that reminded me of the Saintess statue.” A kind of…leaning, listening, thrumming purpose. “I hope I can use the tree to reset myself, so as to hide things from Geppetto.” Suiting actions to words he closed his eyes and focused on that feeling through the hand that was touching the tree. The listening feeling grew so much closer, and more alive, until suddenly—

“–al! Wakey, wakey, pal!”

“M’wake,” the puppet grumbled, sitting up from the position he was apparently now sprawled in. As he did, there was a faint tinkling and chiming sound that came with an unpleasant sensation of something loose inside his workings. He made a disgusted noise, and unbuttoned his shirt carefully. 

“You okay? What are you—oh, god.”

With his chest plates opened, the puppet got himself on his hands and knees and shook himself so a shower of newly unseated Quartz fell out of his mechanisms and onto the grass. “Reset,” he explained.

“Ughhhhh,” Gemini groaned. “Warn a fella next time!”

“I’m sorry,” the puppet lied, and scooped up the quartz carefully, putting them in a spare belt pouch. He rattled himself again, and heard that he had missed a few: he tried to peer into his own chest, and found one but not the other. Gemini sighed, a put-upon sound.

“Go on, hold me close and I’ll look. Is it just one loose in there, do you think?”

“Probably.” 

Gemini found it, and the puppet carefully put it in his main pouch where he also had the battery Eugénie would need. He also pulled from the pouch a couple of the lighter parts he kept on hand in case he ever needed to trade defense for maneuverability, and started swapping them out for the more top-of-the-line parts he had gradually upgraded to over the last attempt at life. That done, he went to the secret door and waited for it to slowly grind open. How often did the Black Rabbit Brotherhood come to steal fruits? Surely they would not try and enter the door: the alchemists seem to have warned them of the hotel’s defenses. Once he was inside he…hesitated. He should go straight to Geppetto’s work room and get things settled there, but he found he did not yet have the heart for it. Instead he hid the bag of Quartz near Aegis and went to ask Polendina if he had yet another change of clothes. (his current set had not just blood and oil, but burned spots from the Watchman’s electricity.) Once he was clean and presentable, he braced himself and slowly ascended to the second floor large office that his father had claimed as his own. 

Geppetto stood up as soon as he saw the puppet. “Ah! You’ve returned. Forgive a sentimental father for worrying about his son.” He looked the puppet over as he approached his father, and added, “You look well, good.”

“Antonia and Eugénie say it is polite to be clean,” the puppet said.

Geppetto smiled with just half of his mouth. “I won’t argue their point! You’re wiser than your father if you already know to listen to women when they tell you such things.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked weary. “Always remember that you’re precious to me. Even when I ask you to do something…dangerous. I never would put you at risk if I didn’t think it was the only way. Tell me—have you been in danger since the moment you woke up? Was there anyone else there in…in the workshop, when you awoke?”

The puppet realized with a rush of uneasy focus that Geppetto had returned to the train car before returning to the hotel. Of course he had—there hadn’t been any other opportunities in the first life, had there been? He’d been at the hotel until the Alchemists took him. The puppet chided himself for not realizing this. He had just been so focused on the upgrades…. “No, father,” he said. Be a puppet, be a puppet, be a puppet, he thought. He folded his hands together and tried to channel Polendina when the butler was hiding his independence. “Would you like to hear more about what it was like when I awoke?”

“...yes,” Geppetto said. He leaned against his desk and folded his arms, fixing his eyes intently on the puppet’s face. “Yes, that would be helpful.”

“There was a glowing butterfly,” the puppet said. “Some things were broken, and there was the lamp I use to light my way in a puddle of red blood. I had to open the door, and outside there were puppets that attacked me. I came to the hotel like the lamp guided me and destroyed a lot of puppets on the way.”

Geppetto’s gloved hand (the one the puppet knew hid frightening technology beneath it) came up and rubbed his mouth. “A dimensional butterfly?” he murmured, clearly talking to himself rather than the puppet. “I never would have…I don’t know how much research there is on their interactions with Ergo. It’s not like Krat is the only place in the world they’re found. I suppose it’s possible….” He was silent, thinking. Then he raised his head, all traces of concern on his face wiped away in favor of a slight smile. “Forgive an old man’s rambles, son. I am glad that the lamp functioned as intended and that you made it here in one piece. Come, sit in my work chair and let me check if you need any repairs.”

The puppet breathed slowly, like a puppet and not like a frightened human. He went to sit in the chair and passively let his father unbutton his shirt and open his chest panels. The technician only glanced at his workings before sitting back and looking at the puppet’s face again with a very blank face. “Am I broken?” The puppet asked, and was proud of how even his voice was.

“There is a part here that I did not install,” Geppetto said coolly. He leaned in again, used a thin tool to move aside wires and tubes and then added, “More than one,” as he unseated the P-organ and pulled it out as far as its connections would allow, looking it over with sharp eyes.

“Yes,” the puppet said politely. He was working very very hard to not think about his father holding his heart in his hands. “When I find parts that seem better than my own I use them. I have done this since the beginning—didn’t you make me this way? To be able to improve myself?”

Geppetto searched his eyes for a while, then a little stiffness went out of his shoulders and he half-smiled again. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I did. A father should be proud when a son takes after him in skill—well-done. I see a part that must have come from that scrapped watchman of Venigni’s: you took it and installed it?”

“It seemed to go there, though I couldn’t tell if it made a difference in my function. Did I do it right?”

“It certainly seems so,” he answered warmly. “Very well-done indeed. Though you should try and make such big upgrades here, my son: out in the field it would be easy to contaminate your mechanisms with foreign matter.” He straightened and turned on his stool to open a drawer in his toolchest. “Where do you find parts? Other puppets?”

“And chests.” The puppet made himself not move. “There are many things in the streets of Krat. Most of the boxes only have things like clothes, papers, and shiny purposeless objects, but chests that have the same emblem as my tool pouch tend to have useful things.”

“Ah, the logo of the workshop! Very true, son.” He angled the light to beam directly on the puppet’s workings, and his face was cast in shadow. “If you find any chests with both that symbol and something that looks like a hand, it is better to bring it directly to me, however. That might be a sign that it had important contents that are well-defended. I would not want you to be harmed.”

The puppet felt the slightest thread of relief. His father did not guess the true fate of the corpse-puppet, then. “Of course, Father. You know best.”

Geppetto hummed, a pleased sound. “Have you found any quartz, by chance? That’s what we call a special type of Ergo, usually very small and spiky pieces with an overall white color.”

“Yes,” the puppet said, and handed over the two he had kept in his pouch. Geppetto nodded, beginning to focus in that way that had made him seem so…reliable, at first.

“Good. Watch carefully—I’ll angle this mirror so you can see all the details—I will install them for you. Are there any elements of your function you feel need particular bolstering? I can explain as I go all the options I built you with.”

*** 

When the ordeal was over the puppet left Geppetto’s office slowly. He was…exhausted, was a good enough word, from having to appear composed. He made his way around to the stairs: Sophia was standing on the landing, watching him. He sat down heavily on the steps near her, and let himself lean on the railing. Gemini chirped, quietly, a commiserating sound. The puppet closed his eyes. After a moment, he felt something in his hair that felt like a warm breeze. When he opened his eyes he saw that it was Sophia’s hand. She was smiling at him, sadly. “You are not telling me everything, clever one,” she said gently.

He closed his eyes again. “Yes.”

Her hand moved to his chin, and nudged it up until he looked at her once more. “Should I be worried?”

“About a lot of things,” Gemini muttered like he couldn’t stop himself.

“I don’t know,” the puppet said. “I will tell you that…that….” he swallowed, an unnecessary movement he had started doing only recently. “...I want to help you. I want to protect Krat and the people in this hotel, and I want to save you. And that is the truth.”

“I know it is, sweet one,” she said even more softly, and withdrew her right hand to fold it in her left. “I will be content with that. You do not owe me all your thoughts.”

Water blurred the puppet’s eyes again, and he leaned his head against her skirt and wished that she was really truly there, and that it wasn’t too late to save her before he even came to life. “Thank you, Sophia. I will do my best.”

***

Chapter Text

***

“Hey, come over here a second!”

The puppet was already heading for Eugénie, but he walked a little faster so she knew he was coming. “Yes, Eugénie?”

“I detected traces of an energy source heading in this direction. You scavenged some kind of cool part, right? Can I see?”

“You can have it,” he said, and passed the Watchman’s battery to the technician. He enjoyed being able to find a thing that his friends liked and give it to them. (he was lucky both Eugénie and Venigni liked broken machines and explosives. It was a lot harder to find things Antonia or Polendina liked.)

“Thanks,” she said sincerely. “I have an idea…Master Venigni left behind a spare legion plug. I’m not an expert at legion arms like he is, but I think I could make one. With this, I have an idea about something to channel electric blitz—wouldn’t that be useful for fighting puppets?”

He nodded. “Yes, it would. I am going to rescue Venigni now.”

“...oh! I saw Master Geppetto returning, but I didn’t realize—already?” She toyed with the storage battery. “I can’t make it that fast. But I’m sure I can have it done by the time you return! You’ll be careful, I hope? Master Venigni said he had plenty of safe spots with supplies at the factory, so I’m sure he’s fine, but I bet you will have to go through a lot of fighting to get to him.” She smiled. “Master Venigni is…a little eccentric. But a good man. It is good of you to rescue him.” 

“I’ll get him.” The puppet shifted. “Geppetto did an upgrade on me—would you like to see?”

“Boy, would I!” she blurted, then her cheeks turned slightly pink and she pushed up her glasses. “Um. That is, thank you. As long as you don’t expect me to really understand what I’m looking at: like I said, I know my way around a weapon, but when it comes to puppets I only really know enough to do an oil change.”

“Do what?” the puppet asked, going to the counter at the back when she gestured him towards it and hopping up to sit on top. Eugénie dragged her stool closer.

“You know, exchange the dirty oil for clean. Any tech can do it—it’s how apprentices without rich families earn their spending money, doing basic maintenance on butler and maid puppets and the like.” She perched on her stool and watched with great interest as he opened his chest panels. “So many points of articulation,” she said with admiration. “More like ribs than a standard puppet chest plate—I guess you need that for the kind of dexterity you want for fighting like a Stalker. And it looks…” she trailed off, then sat back. “Huh.”

“Huh?” the puppet echoed, and tried to see what in his chest cavity could make her look so confused. 

“I take it back: I don’t think I could even do an oil change on you. What the heck?” She must have seen that the puppet looked confused, because she tossed her hair back over her shoulder and pulled over a mirror for him and a magnifying lens for herself. “Most puppets have three major systems in the thoracic cavity: bellows, for ventilation; pump, for oil; and an ergo chamber, for power.” She used the lens to examine his P-organ carefully. “Your bellows are bigger than I’d expect but otherwise looks pretty normal, but it looks like he’s…combined the pump and the ergo chamber, somehow? It’s all tubing leading from it to your mechanisms, it looks like. Normally it’s tubing from the pump and wires from the ergo chamber. Do you use a special kind of oil that helps circulate ergo?”

The puppet had no idea. “It’s my heart,” was all he could think to say in explanation. 

“Huh. Like a human circulatory system? That is…wild. I would love to know the benefits. Not that I would ever bother Master Geppetto just to satisfy my curiosity! But it’s so interesting.” She shifted her gaze to peer closely at the edge of one of his chest plates, and he made sure to hold still. “I can almost see…yeah, you have to use the magnifier, but there are definitely etchings along the periphery of each panel. May I?”

He nodded, and she ran her fingers over the edge of the plate, then pulled off one glove to repeat the motion with her bare fingers. The puppet couldn’t really feel it. He watched in interest as his skin retreated slightly from the edge as she testingly applied pressure. “Etchings?”

“Mm-hmm. The way it shifted there—it regenerates when cut?” She waited for his nod. “Fascinating. It doesn’t quite feel like human skin, but not at all like rubber or leather or fabric, the way I might have guessed.”

The puppet hadn’t had much experience with the feel of human skin. He lifted his right hand and gestured with it: after a moment Eugénie guessed his meaning and let him touch her ungloved hand. He compared it, touching the back of her hand and then the side of his face, and nodded. “It does feel different. Your skin is warm, too.”

“Oh! Maybe that’s the real difference. It doesn’t have the stiffness of leather but not the warmth of human skin either.” She tilted her head. “You have touch sensation on your fingers? Only there?”

“Yes. Well, and on my face. I can feel…pressure, on my body, but not touch.”

“Probably just as well, with the fighting you do,” she said drily. She bent to examine the inside of one of his chest plates and made another interested noise. “There’s the big etching…but, interesting: I don’t think it’s the Grand Covenant.”

“Do you not know the Grand Covenant? Polendina told me.”

“Oh, I know it! But it’s not like you can just write ‘Don’t tell lies’ in English on a puppet’s chassis and expect it to work. You have to translate it into a seal—that’s an Alchemist speciality.” She sat up straight, eyes glinting. “It’s part of Master Geppetto’s genius: it takes someone with that much simultaneous knowledge of alchemy and engineering to make a seal as complex as the Grand Covenant. Master Venigni had the idea for the Covenant, of course, but it was Master Geppetto who did the sums. Of course once a design is made anyone with sufficient skill can copy them down, but that doesn’t mean most people understand them. All of which to say, your seal–” she tapped on his panel: “–seems to be for something different. And of course your structure is mostly metal, all fighting puppets’ are, but the sheen here is unusual.”

“What are other puppets made of?” The puppet asked curiously. “A maid puppet definitely crunches differently from a soldier.”

“Oof,” she said. “So descriptive. It’s Xylonite, usually! Imitation ivory. Some custom ones use porcelain, but that’s not usual. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a porcelain puppet in real life. I hear the ones used for performances at the opera house have porcelain shells but I was always too busy with my work to have time for that stuff, before the Frenzy.” 

The puppet hummed, and pulled an amulet out of his pouch. (After removing the quartz upgrades, the two extra amulet slots in his back had deactivated, so he had his spare gear in waiting for when he could have use of them again.) “It looks like this metal, what’s in me.”

“Good catch!” she said approvingly. “You’re probably right. Meteorite alloy. Boy, that must have hurt even the pocketbook of the head of the workshop union.” She snorted. “Stuff like this is why technicians from outside Krat accuse us of witchcraft, you know. But it’s not! It’s all maths. I may not be able to perform the calculations myself, but I’ve seen the numbers.” She pulled her glove back on and got down from her stool. “Thank you for letting me look. Oh! Before you leave, I have something for you.”

The puppet hopped down from his own perch. “Is it my mask?” he said, trying not to be over-eager. 

“You got it.” She went back to her main workbench, and pulled aside the red cloth draped over it with a flourish. “Here you are, Master Stalker.”

The puppet eagerly picked it up, turning it over and taking in every detail. It was made of sturdy leather in shades of brown, overlapping sections that suggested chitin plates. The strap that fastened it on was black, and the puppet laid it across his face. It went from his forehead down to cover his nose and cheeks, leaving the lower part of his face bare. “It fits well!”

Eugénie blew out a breath that puffed her cheeks. “Phew! I was worried. I’m sorry that it’s so rough…if I can improve it later I will. It’s not dyed or embossed or anything. Since you’re a puppet you don’t need a filter, so we have a half-mask design.” He lowered the mask and smiled at her, even his teeth showing. She looked startled for a moment, then smiled back. “Here, let me re-tie your hair and then you can wear it, okay?”

She did. When he tied the mask over his face he stepped back and shook his head, feeling it not move, then gave her the Stalker’s salute. “Thank you, Eugénie. You know your way around more than just weapons.”

“Oh, go on,” she said, then just looked at him for a moment. The puppet realized with startled delight that she was looking at him as a person. “Hey. I mean it about being careful out there, all right?” She pushed up her glasses and sat back on her stool. “You have to come back and get your new arm, after all!”

“Yes, Eugénie,” the puppet agreed happily.

***

Polendina said, “How may I be of assistance?”

The puppet wished Lady Antonia’s assistant had points of articulation in his face. It would make it so much easier to read him. He held out a little string bag in his cupped hands. “This is for Antonia. These fruits are supposed to be good for a person’s health. It’s not like they can cure disease, but I wondered if you might have a way to add them to her meals sometimes? In case it does help her health.”

“Of course, sir,” Polendina said, and accepted the bag, putting it away under his counter. “I am sure Lady Antonia will appreciate the variety.”

“Thank you. I hope it helps.”

Stepping outside the hotel back onto Elysion Boulevard, the puppet looked up at the sky, which was a cloudy early-morning. Gemini's light washed faintly green over the cobbles as he said, “Time to go rescue Lorenzini Venigni, the classiest playboy and most brilliant inventor in Krat. At least according to him! I do know he owns the biggest factory in Krat—not just for puppets, either. Look, you can see his logo on that tram car up there! Gotta be curious about the guy, about what kinda person he is.”

“If Eugénie says he’s a good person, that is good enough for me,” the puppet said, then found himself laughing just a little. “But I do know what kind of person he is—I have met him before, remember?”

Gemini let out a blast of static. “Jeepers! You’d think I couldn't forget something like that! Of course you’d know him. Well, pal? You think the word on the street is more right, or Eugénie?”

“I don’t know about class or playboys,” the puppet said, running at an easy pace down the street, “but he is brilliant and he is good. He wants to help Krat, and he is a kind man who calls me his friend and talks to me like I am a person.”

“Makes sense, seeing as you are a person, buddy,” the cricket said firmly. “Alright then! Let’s go save a genius inventor who may or may not be a classy playboy.”

***

Chapter Text

***

The puppet hung up the phone, and caught the Trinity key that fell out of its base. “You okay there, pal?” Gemini asked. “You seem…tense. Don’t like riddles?”

He seemed tense? The puppet took stock of himself. Whatever he was doing, he needed to learn to stop it so that he could hide tenseness. “It’s not that,” he said after a moment. “Riddles are interesting. But Arlecchino is evil.”

“He’s what now?” the cricket squeaked. 

“He’s an evil, murderous puppet,” he replied. He flicked a cogwheel at each of the puppets hanging off the bridge to knock them down, and blocked the firebomb one of the puppets already on the bridge hurled at him. Sprinting up, he slammed the puppet’s side with his electric coil stick, and dodged another projectile from further down the bridge before finishing off the enemy in front of him. “He might even be the first puppet to have awakened his ego, although I don’t know that for sure. He killed Venigni’s parents when Venigni was a child, and a lot of other people too.”

“...should we be talking to him then?”

“I don’t know,” the puppet said honestly, using his legion arm to yank the remaining puppet to himself so he could punch it to the ground and bash its chest in. “I don’t want to. But the keys he gives open doors with useful resources, and he’s….” the puppet trailed off. He didn’t know how much he should say about Sophia. “...if I don’t entertain him, he might find someone else to torment. This seems safer.”

“I trust your judgement,” Gemini said. “Oh, one more over there by the stairs!”

“Thanks,” he said, and scooped up the discarded grenade the lamp had seen. “Gemini, would you call any of these puppets we have been fighting a messenger?”

“What?” Gemini laughed. “I mean, no! Not unless you mean like…messengers of chaos and destruction.”

The puppet shook his head, smiling slightly at his friend's dramatic tone, and started ascending to the top of the Venigni Works wall. “No, when I fought the King—you know, before—he was trying to tell me something I didn’t understand. Later Venigni translated Ergo waves and the King’s recording said that he had ‘sent messengers’ but that I got rid of them. I have been trying to see if any of the puppets we meet seem to be trying to talk to us, but….”

“Nah, not that I’ve seen. I’ll keep my eyes open, though.” His voice turned thoughtful. “Ergo waves, huh? That would explain some things.”

The puppet fought his way through the factory, interested to find that the salamander dagger was in its safe despite the fact that it was also with his alternate weapons back at the hotel. Getting deeper into the factory, he was glad to see the Fox and the Cat. It would take work to make them his friends again—it was too bad he had given all the fruit to Polendina!—but they were the first people outside the hotel to specifically call him their friend. He wouldn’t want to give that up. (And he liked the Cat and the Fox. The way they cared for each other was beautiful. They were…unkind, sometimes, but part of that was ‘teasing’. He had learned about teasing when Antonia explained it after Eugénie accidentally hurt the puppet’s feelings.) “Ooh,” the Fox said as he approached, “Admirers seem to follow me everywhere. Pleased to see you, my Stalker friend.”

“You’ve made it all the way in here unbothered by ruffians,” the Cat added. “You’ve got talent! I’ve never seen you before, but there are plenty of Bastards I don’t know. Did you get the S.O.S too?”

“The what?” the puppet asked.

“The distress call,” the Fox said. She always sounded like she was half-smiling under her mask. The puppet understood why the Cat had chosen her for his sister. “Did you catch that subtle whiff of money in the air? Moneybags himself, Lorenzini Venigni, is holed up inside this very factory as we speak.”

“You caught us on our return trip. He was telephoning every Stalker outpost in the city, apparently, and he just so happened to catch us at one. He made it sound like some kind of cakewalk, coming to get him; but really he wants someone fight through a whole factory of puppets, destroy a giant puppet, and escort him through half the city. What a joke! I’m glad we could turn him down in person so he knows we’re serious, no way we’re doing that.”

“Ah,” the puppet said, nodding sympathetically. “You’re afraid.”

“Any sane person would be,” the Fox said, lazy amusement in her voice, while the Cat’s back seemed to stiffen.

“Do you see that thing down below?” the Cat blurted indignantly. “Ridiculous. We’re not afraid, we’re reasonable.”

The puppet nodded, looking at the puppet of the future. “I’ll help,” he said blandly, and went off to the side and stood on top of the rail. When the Puppet of the Future’s slow back-and-forth took it to their end of the culvert, he took the three throwing cells he’d salvaged from the puppets outside the factory and tossed them one by one into the giant form. When it froze and started jerking, fully stricken by electric shock, he used his Puppet String to launch himself to it for a mid-air attack. Disengaging and dropping to the ground, it only took a few more hits to fell it. He stepped on top of the fallen metal chassis, taking an ampoule to clear the effects of corruption, and went to pull the Quartz from its mechanisms. That done, he fired off another string to the railing above and let it pull him in reach of it. He clambered over, then swept a bow to the Stalkers. “There, you are welcome,” he said, and smugly rocked up and down to his toes, reloading his arm with a few legion magazines as he waited for their response.

The Cat wasn’t lazily leaning against the pillar any more: he had his spear in his hands. “What the hell are you?”

“I am a Stalker puppet designed by Master Geppetto to deal with the Krat disaster,” the puppet said. 

“You look human!” the Cat said, accusative.

“I feel human,” the puppet said, which was probably more honest than he should have been. But it felt nice to say it. He shrugged. “I think Master Geppetto made me too complex. I’m not a very…respectable puppet.”

“Considering that all the respectable puppets went murderously insane, I suppose that is a good thing,” the Fox said. Her voice was as relaxed as ever, though she also had her sword over her shoulder instead of sheathed. “Well, as long as it’s puppets you’re killing and not us, I suppose we have no quarrel with you, friend. Your mask—some sort of insect?”

“I’m Cricket,” the puppet said. It was the very first time he had ever had something like a name to introduce himself by, and he felt a rejuvenating rush of warmth like a pulse cell repairing damage. (It also felt like he was...getting away with something.) “Yes, I have no intention of harming humans who don’t try to kill me first. Do you want to work together?”

“No thanks,” the Cat said emphatically. “No way we’re getting involved in that.”

“For now at least it seems we will go our separate ways,” the Fox said more diplomatically. “I suspect if we go out the way you came in we’ll find a nice clear path. We’ll see you if we see you, Cricket.”

“Be safe,” the puppet said, and carried on. He turned the lever to drain the corrosive liquid in the culvert, and the shovel-wielding puppet was much less deadly than he remembered from the first time. Once that was gone, he went back down into the culvert—the Fox and the Cat had already left—and gladly reclaimed his booster glaive handle. He sat right there in the muck and pulled out his Enigma Tool to swap out the electric coil stick handle for the booster glaive handle, discarding the two left-over parts he no longer needed. He took a few testing swings, activated the boost to get reacquainted with that as well, and held it up triumphantly. “This is our new best friend, Gemini,” he declared, and the cricket lamp snorted.

“If you say so, buddy.”

It wasn’t much further to where Venigni was, deep in the factory. As before, he watched from the rafters for a little while after destroying the puppets up high: periodically, a puppet would rather half-heartedly bash on the door to the office the technician was holed up in before once more wandering away. When he had seen enough, the puppet jumped heavily down on the latest such patrolling puppet and smashed it to pieces with his weapon. He then used the key Geppetto had given him and opened the door, ducking as a cluster grenade was thrown at him, and closed it behind him to protect them from the sparking of the grenade. “Easy now, no need to kill me!” Venigni yelped from where he was kneeling behind a decommissioned mining puppet. “Surely we can discuss this like reasonable, ah, people?”

“Geppetto sent me to help you,” the puppet said, delighted to see his friend even if it was disheartening to be so feared. 

“Really?” Venigni said, immediately brightening. He sprung to his feet and brushed himself off, putting on his top hat and gloves and otherwise pulling himself together rapidly. “How wonderful! I knew he was working on a custom fighting puppet, but you are no mere prototype, my friend—how thrilling!” He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “I thought I had already hired a Stalker escort, but they turned tail. Not very professional!”

“But understandable,” the puppet said. “The factory is quite…overrun.”

“Yes," the inventor said grimly. “To think of my marvelous equipment being used to such damaging ends! —ah, it is missing components, it seems,” he said suddenly as the puppet took Stargazer pieces from a workbench and arranged them near the door. “I was trying to repair it: the last thing I needed on top of everything else was a reaction to inhaling too many Ergo spores! Alas, Stargazers are Stalker technology about which they are rather proprietary, so I was on my back foot and did not realize I missed some pieces as I was fleeing into this refuge.”

“I will find them and bring them back,” the puppet assured him. 

“If you could, while you are looking,” he blurted, “Please—help me find my butler Pulcinella. He is a puppet, and a friend! He barricaded the door so I could flee without being overrun, and I have not seen him since. I had grand thoughts of returning here and rescuing him, but, pah!” The corners of his mouth twisted. “You see how well that turned out. Please, he has been a loyal companion…I hate to lose him.”

“Of course I will look for him,” the puppet said immediately. “Is he the only reason you haven’t left?”

“Well, him and the small army of hostile puppets between me and an exit,” he said. “I even thought to flee out the back, through Moonlight Town, but no—Fuoco is holding court and will permit no one to trespass on his domain. In addition, I do most strongly desire to take back the factory: the thought that it churns out puppets every day is no longer a source of pride, but horror.”

“Fuoco is in charge?”

“He seems to be,” Venigni said, and took off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “He was a stand-up fellow, once. Very reliable, very adaptable. If only my human employees took such pride in their work as he! You will find him quite the troublesome prey, I fear, friend. He was built to endure.”

“I was built to destroy,” the puppet said, a little wistfully. “I will succeed, and then we can return to the hotel.”

***

Chapter Text

***

Once Fuoco fell, the puppet salvaged his Ergo and a few useful parts; while he did, Gemini burst out excitedly: “Pal, pal! I was listening real hard, just like you asked, and I think I understood something he was saying!”

“That’s fantastic!” the puppet said, bending to scrape tar off his boot. (It was a lot harder to find good shoes that fit than good clothes.) “How? What was he saying?” 

“I couldn’t get it all,” Gemini admitted, “but I remembered the things you said about him, that he seemed to take orders from the king. I guess I was thinking about that, and when I was listening, I thought I heard him say ‘king’, and obviously, he’s got a whole…thing, you know, with fire, so focusing on that thought I was able to hear ‘flame’ too. And it was like understanding those two things tuned my ears and I think I heard pretty clearly that the last thing he said was ‘worship the king of puppets’!”

“Worship?” the puppet asked, going over to Pulcinella’s unpowered form and hefting it as gently as possible over his shoulder. “Isn’t that what people do to God?”

“You got it, pal. Weird, right? From what you said before it seemed like the King of Puppets was trying to do right by the City of Krat as much as he could, but if he’s trying to make himself out to be some kind of God to the puppets…I dunno how I feel about that. Do we wanna work with a guy like that?”

“No,” the puppet said. “That’s the kind of person Simon Manus is, and he is evil. But…I don’t know if the King told Fuoco to worship him. I have read stories, stories about the ‘one-winged angel’ from Krat’s past…I felt sorry for it. It seemed like it was just some sort of strange creature, not a human but probably a person, and humans started calling it a God whether it wanted to be one or not.” 

Gemini snorted. “Yeah, humans’ll do that. All right, I won’t judge the King by his followers just yet. He might be working with what he’s got—he can’t order the puppets who aren’t awakened, right? And if awakened puppets are basically human, they must have as wide of a range as regular ol’...meat humans. Gotta be more than a few crazies in there, right?”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed, kicking a legless and headless puppet away down the stairs as it tried to hit him. “Crazy seems like a very usual sort of human thing to be.”

They made it back to Venigni’s sanctuary, and the puppet tried to politely knock at the door with his foot. It was yanked open a moment later, and the inventor hurried them inside. “You’re back! And you found…oh, dear. Pulcinella, my friend, they really did a number on you.” Carelessly, he swept multiple parts off a workbench. “Can you lay him here, please? Thank you, compagno.”

Compagno! The puppet was excited to hear it again. Like ‘pal’ or ‘clever one’, it was one of the first almost-names he had been given. He laid out Pulcinella, picking up his hand when it fell off and returning it to the bench. Venigni muttered to himself in Italian as he examined his friend: Pulcinella’s frame was quite bent out of shape, so the technician had to use multiple tools and not a bit of brute force to get his chest panel opened. It really did look a mess in there. “Can you fix him?” the puppet asked, suddenly worried that things had somehow gone slightly different this time and it would not be possible.

“You speak to the most brilliant engineer in Krat!” Vengni exclaimed. “As well ask the sun if it thinks it can rise! Of course, of course. A bit of work and he will be good as new. Pulcinella is proof that puppets possess true courage. I will not rest until he is revived. Look, see, he was so badly jostled that his Ergo chamber is disconnected—no way to get power to any of his mechanisms. Just as well at the moment, I cannot imagine it would be enjoyable to experience a body such as this. I will let him remain ‘unconscious’ until I have fixed his form. My equipment at the hotel will suffice, although….” He stroked his goatee. “Compagno, could I impose on you once more? This task would be easier if I had a few replacement parts and tools that I have neither here or at Hotel Krat. Do I ask too much of you to go back out into the factory in search of them?”

“I will do it,” the puppet said. He watched in interest as Venigni took some sort of report from a desk drawer, and on the blank back of the paper began to quickly and clearly sketch out a set of parts. Once done with that, on the bottom of the paper he drew a rough little factory map and with arrows showed which part could probably be found where. The puppet thought to ask: “If I see things I want for myself, can I just take them as well?”

“But of course!” Venigni said instantly, bowing shallowly and handing over the paper. “It seems but meager reward for your tremendous efforts on our behalf! Although I cannot imagine my factory has parts better than what Geppetto would have given you, and we manufacture no weapons here such as a Stalker would delight in. We get one in here and there for testing, but that is all done by contractors.”

“If there is a spot where batteries will be found, I can convert them to throwing cells,” the puppet said, and Venigni reclaimed the paper and drew little lightning-bolt symbols at several points on the rough map. “And…” he shifted on his feet, feeling a little awkward. “Do any…that is, if anyone would listen to music in their office, I can check it. I like records.”

“Oh-ho! A good thought. Foreman Gallo was indeed known to play Debussy over the speakers if he believed the workers needed a change of pace. Here, there by the shell fabrication department is his office…but, please…do not let me know what else you find there.” He looked very weary all of a sudden. “Many of my senior technicians were the last to leave when the Frenzy hit. Good men, all, trying to help our people escape. If he is there…well. I don’t want to know, I suppose. I will imagine that he is living well somewhere else in Krat.”

“I understand,” the puppet said gently. Lady Antonia had told him about how humans treat their dead with dignity, in the same conversation where she explained ‘desecration’: if Gallo’s corpse was there, he would lay it out properly and cover it in a cloth. He didn’t have any flowers, but perhaps a particularly fine mechanical part would do.

***

Venigni insisted on carrying Pulcinella’s body himself as they left the factory so that the puppet’s hands would be free for fighting: the human was stronger than expected, but the puppet still offered to take the butler puppet’s legs to lighten some of the weight. They walked, Gemini and the yellowish light of a few surviving streetlights the only things holding back the deepening dark, and Venigni never ceased talking.

“Ah, there is my poor watchman! I was too ambitious with him, not thorough enough in the testing. I was not so used to making puppets so large. A failure that I learned much from. I was glad that the fellow still was able to fulfill his role in some part, though: the children did love him.”

“He loved them too,” the puppet said, and altered their path to instead go past the little altar on the bench where the watchman had paid tribute to his friends. For the first time in their walk Venigni was for a long moment silent, as he took in the tableau.

“...yes, I suppose he did.” It was hard to see his expression in the dim light, but the puppet thought his brow was furrowed. “In one sense, Pulcinella has never been just a puppet to me. And I have encountered…other puppets similarly unlike the majority of their kind. In that light it is not surprising to see such evidence. But…ah, now is not the time. The Frenzy has had me thinking very hard, lately, about how little we really know about Ergo.”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed. In fact he had been trying to work out what was common knowledge and what would be startling for him to reveal, and not having much luck at it. “Some puppets have their egos awaken, and some do not.”

“Exactly!” Venigni said as they resumed their walk to the hotel. “One hears rumors…I have even pursued some of them, in quieter years. There can be two maid puppets who came off the same line on the same day, made from the same shipment of Ergo, and yet one can function exactly as the catalog model and one can have quirks. It is baffling.” 

“Eugénie said that you are a good employer,” the puppet said, and Venigni looked flattered. “You say your butler Pulcinella is not a common puppet. You are kind to him, and you treat him as a friend. If one of those maid puppets was loved and one was not, wouldn’t that be more important than the day they were made?”

Venigni sighed, thoughtful. “Not a very scientific thought, is it? But that does not make it untrue. You give me food for thought, compagno. Truly, for Geppetto to send you to save me was greater kindness than even he knew!” 

“I hope so.” The puppet held up a hand to indicate they should stop, and lowered his voice. “There are dogs ahead. Can you climb the ladder? I will carry Pulcinella up.”

“Ah! Oh, yes.” They transferred burdens, then the puppet started climbing: it was difficult one-handed, but not impossible. Venigni still had breath to speak. “Antony Belford was a technician contemporary of Geppetto’s: while Geppetto and the other technicians focused on puppets for work and service tasks that otherwise humans have to do, Master Belford was desirous of creating mechanical pets. Ones old age could not defeat, you know. He made a good deal of progress, though it is tricky to reliably manufacture components on a smaller scale as he was attempting. His children inherited his blueprints, but their small factory shifted their focus to guard dogs. Quite effective, from what people say.”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed as he reached the rooftop. “They are agile, hard to hit and quick to strike back.”

“I do not deny the engineering,” Venigni said ruefully, “I simply cannot feel much affinity for the designs. I prefer puppets that look friendly, approachable! Though right now you are one of the few whose visage retains any friendliness regardless of aesthetics.”

The puppet looked friendly? He liked the thought of that. Maybe only Venigni thought so, since he was peculiar, but the puppet would like if it were so. Wouldn’t it be easier to help people if they believed he was friendly on first seeing him? He held out a hand to stop his companion from moving further, and edged to where he could see around the wall. He hadn’t come here yet in this version of life, but if it was the same as last time…yes, one of the small screeching puppets was hanging off the ledge there. The puppet scooped up a sharp pipe from the roof gutter and flung it, knocking it free to plummet to the streets below. That done, he urged Venigni forward. “That is what you design puppets to look like? Friendly?”

“But of course! Naturally, not every household who orders a Venigni puppet will use the default designs in full—that is the power of modularity, and a reason for our enduring popularity!—but when we supply the face plate, we use a couple of standard designs commissioned from artists more than a decade ago. Quality you can rely on! Occasionally, we will make updates—”

By the time they reached the hotel, it was fully midnight and the inventor’s words had nearly run out. The puppet held the door for him and his burden. Eugénie’s head was in her arms at her workbench as they entered, but she bolted up as they came closer at the sound of Venigni talking to Polendina. She scrubbed at her eyes, clearly half-asleep, and stood up off her stool. “Master Venigni, it is so good to see you! I was worried about my best customer.”

“Miss Eugénie!” Venigni said with clear delight. “Such flattery from a weaponsmith whose reliability would see her successful wherever she goes! If I might impose on your reliability for a moment—”

“Of course,” she said instantly, and went across to the alcove that Venigni had claimed for his own. She cleared a spot for the butler puppet to be laid down. “Do we need to wake Master Geppetto?”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” Venigni said, handing his coat and hat to Polendina and beginning to roll up his cuffs. “I have been proving my skill to Master Geppetto since I was ten years old and I do not intend to stop now!”

“Do you need my help?” the puppet asked. He wanted to use the part from Fuoco to recreate Flamberge, but last time he had completely missed Pulcinella’s repair and he found he wanted to see it now. 

“I would not turn it down,” Venigni said, and started to lay out tools. “Miss Eugénie, you were truly kind to wait, but should you not join Antonia and Guiseppe in the land of slumber?”

Eugénie sniffed, pushing up her glasses with the back of her hand, and took one of the legs the puppet had been carrying. “I’m awake now: I might as well make myself useful. I am no puppeteer, but I can clean as well as anyone.”

“Eugénie is making me a legion arm,” the puppet said proudly to Venigni, who grinned more brightly than he had since the puppet found him. 

“Of course she is! Pulcinella will be desirous of seeing it as soon as he is himself again. He always had a keen eye for such things. Well, compagno, if you are truly willing to sacrifice our time for my project—pass me those vice grips and we shall see what we shall see.”

***

Chapter Text

***

“Excuse me, sir.”

At Polendina’s voice, the puppet looked up from the gear he was bending back into shape, blinking. “Yes?”

“Master Geppetto requests your presence.”

“Oh,” the puppet said. His father was awake, then. “I am sorry, Venigni; I will need to report.” He wiped his hands off on a rag and began putting his mask back on.

“Ah, of course.” The inventor’s voice was much flattened after the hours of work, and he blinked blearily. “Ah! That is, I should greet him myself, and thank him for the timely rescue. Miss Eugénie, your help has been invaluable but I have selfishly kept you from your rest. Please, I can finish the work myself.”

Eugénie put her hands behind her back and looked him up and down. “Or…you can clean yourself, get some rest, and finish after.”

“...but, you see, I should not rest until—”

“Those of us who are not puppets have working olfactory senses,” she said bluntly.

Venigni laughed, snorting and inelegant. “Oh! Well, if it is a matter of aroma….” he planted his hands on the bench by Pulchinella’s much-repaired form, slumping over it. “I suppose it would distress my butler to see me in this state.”

“Your rooms remain as you left them, sir,” Polendina said politely. “It would be simple to prepare a bath, and clothes are laid by.”

“I am outnumbered,” Venigni said, and stretched his arms toward the ceiling. “Very well! If I think on it, I would really do better to leave the more delicate rewiring until my eyes are rested. Come, compagno, we shall greet Master Geppetto.”

At the double doors upstairs, Venigni knocked but then entered without waiting for permission. “Venigni,” the puppet’s maker said with every show of warmth, “It is a tremendous relief to see you alive.” 

“It is a relief to be alive,” Venigni said, striding forwards with his hand outstretched. Geppetto clasped it. “This puppet of yours—truly a marvel! He got me out by clearing most of the factory, and he even took down Fuoco! A remarkable feat, Geppetto, remarkable.”

“A compliment from the genius inventor Venigni? I am honored.” He stepped over to the puppet and held him by the shoulders, looking him over. “I am relieved to see you intact as well, my son. Thank you for remembering that you are precious to me.” Over his father’s shoulder, the puppet saw Venigni’s tired eyes sharpen in interest as he watched. 

“I found two more Quartz,” the puppet said. “Can you install them, please?”

“But of course! Have a seat. Venigni, I am sure you are exhausted—”

“I do not deny it, but I will not miss the chance to get a better look at your creation, my friend.”

Geppetto smiled. His head was tilted down as he opened his toolbox and his eyes were shadowed. “Of course.” He took the Quartz the puppet gave him and opened the puppet’s chest up to install them. Venigni hovered over his shoulder to observe, and made interested noises at every stage.

“No one could ever doubt your brilliance, Geppetto. The work you have done here…you are truly an artist.”

“I try,” Geppetto said simply, and closed up the puppet again. “Son, with your work at the factory you have bought us time. Even if we don’t have the manpower yet to set it to work making other supplies, at least we have prevented the puppets from making their own endless string of reinforcements.”

“They were more organized than puppets should be, Geppetto,” Venigni said. “And not merely Frenzied, but seeming almost to communicate with each other.”

“That is most concerning,” Geppetto said gravely.

“What am I to do next?” the puppet asked, and his father sighed, brow furrowed. 

“I think…much as I hate the thought of sending you into danger once more, my son, I believe the wisest next step would be for you to go to the Cathedral. It was used as a refuge, and if there are still survivors they will surely need aid. Investigate, son, and bring back word of what you find.”

“I will,” the puppet said, and bowed slightly before turning to leave. He heard Venigni saying goodbyes behind him as he went out the door, and took the opportunity to release the sigh of relief that had been building. His father hadn’t made him take off the mask! It had helped, quite a lot, to have it hiding his face. 

“Your bath is drawn, sir,” Polendina said to Venigni when he closed the doors behind him, and the technician clapped his hands together. 

“Marvelous! Compagno, can I beg your time a moment longer? It occurs to me that you will pass through my factory again to go to the Cathedral, traversing via Moonlight Town. I confess my optimism is not so great as to the odds of many survivors there, but if you will let me mark on your paper I gave you before, I will indicate where there are supply caches in the factory that may yet be untouched. You could perhaps bring some things with you, to offer relief to any survivors in hiding there.”

“Very well,” the puppet said. There were no survivors in Moonlight Town, but it was a kind thought on Venigni’s part and one he did not want to step on. Inside the hotel rooms that were Venigni’s the man hurried to a writing desk and quickly marked the puppet’s map. After that he ducked his head around to the bathroom and made a triumphant sound.

“Ah, there are two bathrobes here! Why not shed your garb here so that Polendina can collect yours and mine together with no need for a second trip?” He pulled out the two robes and hung them over the back of a chair, then suited action to word and began unfastening his shirt. 

“But for changing clothes,” the puppet said hesitantly, “I thought…out of sight?”

“We are all men here, compagno, let us not mistake modesty for prudery!”

“Polendina and I are not men,” he had to point out. “We are puppets.”

“Most excellent puppets,” Venigni agreed, then apparently mistook the reason for the puppet’s hesitation: “Please, allow me!” When the puppet nodded permission, Venigni started skillfully unfastening the buckles along the top of the Puppet String, then folding down the cuff at the top. The puppet obligingly clenched the hand into a fist and rotated the arm as far right as it would twist, which separated the top plates, allowing Venigni to get his fingers in to disconnect the plug from the puppet’s frame. “Master Geppetto designed you specifically to use my Legion arms! He is not the type to freely give compliments, so I will take this as one.” He set the arm on a side table. The puppet, surrendering to the situation, put Gemini beside it and started undoing the buttons on his waistcoat. Venigni handed his shirt to Polendina and shrugged out of his suspenders before balancing awkwardly to pull off a shoe. “But to answer your earlier comment—true you are puppets, but you are designed as men, not women.”

“We’re very different, though,” the puppet had to argue. Venigni was pulling off his trousers, and the puppet tried to decide if it was tactful to point as illustration of his next statement. “We don’t have…ah….”

The inventor laughed, tossing his trousers over to the butler. “That is true! And no tastebuds to enjoy good food either—so you are sadly deprived of two of life’s fine pleasures. Still, this is not all it takes to be a man.” He shed the last of his clothes and threw on one of the bathrobes with a flourish.

“How can a puppet be a man or woman?” The puppet asked. Polendina took his clothes too, though the puppet still left on his defensive liner.

Venigni raised a finger, opening his mouth to speak, then stopped. He laughed again. “Hah! You have me doubting my own knowledge. All I can really say is that if someone looks at you, they will think you a man.”

“So it’s about appearance?”

“Yes and no,” he said, going to the sideboard and pouring himself a glass of something golden. He sipped it and made an appreciative sound. “Marvelous. I suppose that is too simple of a way to think of it. I could tell you, well, someone wearing trousers rather than skirts, who has a flat chest rather than a bosom, will be assumed to be a man: but in Krat they could just as easily be a female Stalker in armor.” He sat heavily in an upholstered chair and took another sip of his drink. “To tell you the truth, compagno, describing ‘what makes you a man’ and how that is different from a woman is not the same in Krat as it is elsewhere! In foreign cities I think they hold to older, perhaps unscientific definitions: but I am a man of science, an engineer! I will go by the evidence! So a person from elsewhere might say that men are stronger than women, but then of course in Krat there are plenty of lady Stalkers who could throw me across a room easily. They might say that men are academics, the thinkers, but the late Camille Geppetto—may she rest in peace—was in every way her husband’s equal.” He made a rather silly face. “Indeed, among my contemporaries, the only one who could hope to keep up with me was Marianne Jacques. If she had not died young, working with the Alchemists, no doubt she would be my biggest rival today! But, besides the point. People outside Krat may also say women are the gentle sex, but I have met Alchemist women as cruel as snakes.” He leaned forward in his chair with a conspiratorial look.  “So what is it that makes someone a man?”

The puppet leaned forward despite himself. “What?”

“Why, if he feels himself to be one, of course!” He cried, and toasted them both with his glass before draining it. “I can only think that if by some feat of mad science I found myself in…in the body of a Puppet of the Future, I would nevertheless still think myself a man. And what of you, Polendina? Would you say you are a man?”

“I am a puppet,” he replied evenly. “I serve Lady Antonia: that is my purpose.”

“Certainly, certainly. Well. Are you a woman?”

“No,” the butler said. “I am a puppet.”

“Ah-ha!” he said brightly. “A firm no this time! So you see? There is a difference that our friend Polendina here feels. Perhaps you will feel the same, once you have been active for a few more years.”

“I suppose,” the puppet said doubtfully. This whole man vs woman business seemed like a rather silly waste of time to him. His best friends were Venigni, Eugénie, and Gemini: a man, a woman, and a puppet. But he did not think of them based on those factors at all. The main concern with distinguishing man and woman seemed to be whether he would call someone ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’. “Thank you for trying to explain. I will be leaving soon.”

“If you will, my friend, a question: did you perchance scavenge Fuoco’s flame amplifier when you felled him?” When the puppet nodded, Venigni got back to his feet and patted his shoulder over the bathrobe sleeve that was empty. “Pleace consider leaving it with my station downstairs: I would make you a Legion arm with it, after I finish reviving Pulcinella.”

“All right,” the puppet said, not at all upset to have someone else be the maker of Flamberge. “I will look forward to it.” He retrieved his arm and he and Polendina left the room. When they were in the corridor, the puppet leaned against the wall and tried to make an expression to communicate both how much he liked Venigni and how overwhelming he was to talk to. 

“I have a bath drawn for you as well, sir,” Polendina said, as politely as ever. “And some laundered clothes laid out.” He paused, just enough to notice, and added: "Humans find a warm bath quite relaxing, sir. I hope you do the same.”

Well that wasn't purely professional reserve! “Thank you, Polendina,” the puppet said happily.

***

Once he was clean, in his brown waistcoat and trousers and a striped blouse that must have been donated by Lady Antonia, the puppet returned downstairs. He went to Venigni’s alcove and addressed the still puppet within: “In case you can hear me, Pulcinella, please try not to worry: Master Venigni seems well. I think he will be able to get some sleep and then he will fix you as good as new.” After a moment’s hesitation, the puppet did as Venigni had done to him, and patted the butler puppet’s shoulder. “Take care of him.”

He nodded to Sophia, standing silent in a flutter of blue by the giant Stargazer, and went out the front door. There were a few more inactive puppets out front than there had been the last time. “Uh, pal?” Gemini piped up. “It's better to go out the other door to get to the factory and Moonlight Town. What are we here for?”

“There is something we need to do first. In…” the puppet thought hard. “...in thirteen days, Kroud will burst through the ground in a large area near the train station, where the workshop tower collapsed. There may still be survivors there, so they should be evacuated before that happens.”

“We’re going to rescue survivors?” the cricket asked, understandably hesitant. “Would they…I mean, what if someone recognizes that you’re a puppet?”

“That’s why we’re not rescuing them right now,” the puppet agreed. “We need to not delay too long in getting to the Cathedral, both to thin out the Carcasses there and to get Giangio to come to the hotel to make his cure.”

“A cure,” Gemini said in wonder. “You say that so casually! After the Alchemists tried and failed for so long!”

“I don’t think they were trying very hard,” the puppet said grimly. “One reason to go there now: there are several buildings with Alchemists and their experiments, and it would be good to destroy them well before anyone tries to lead civilians away. There are supplies that will be useful as well. And…I need to check on something.”

The cricket chirped thoughtfully. “You’re the expert here, buddy, I’ll follow your lead the same as always. Just let me know if there’s anything in particular you need me to look or listen for! Aside from, you know. The obvious.”

“I have plenty of cogwheels and star fragments, so don’t highlight those for now, please. If there are any golden crystals, warn me so I can destroy them before they harm us.” The puppet squared his shoulders and tossed back his hair—he’d gotten used to having it tied, but it wasn’t like he was going to bother Eugénie after she went to bed—and prepared himself for the possibility that he was about to ruin everything by trying to go out of sequence like this. 

***

Chapter Text

***

It looked very different with all the streets and buildings still in one piece. The puppet found himself slightly lost until he ran into a ladder that let him ascend to the roof and get a better view that way. The place had quite a few carcasses roaming through it, though not as much as there had been after he killed the King of Puppets. The Alchemists were keeping mostly to a bare handful of buildings, from what he could find. The first building was easy to clear: he knew by now that breaking their elixir devices would stagger them, so that was a great advantage. The second had the screeching Alchemist creature that duplicated itself, and that was still a bit of a difficult fight. 

The third building had several weak fighters on the ground floor and then a door to the basement that must have been collapsed when he had come here in the before time. Inside were two more alchemists, and multiple cages full of monsters. Out of one of the cages furthest from the door a voice called: “Are you a Stalker? I’m a soldier, my name’s Atkinson.”

The puppet hid his surprise. He hadn’t expected to meet Belle’s partner so differently this time. Now that he was faced with the fact of him, though, he called himself an idiot. Belle and Atkinson hadn’t been in Krat long enough for Atkinson to have naturally developed advanced Petrification Disease that was then mutated with the false cure: deliberate experimentation by the Alchemists only made sense. “Yes, I’m the Stalker Cricket.” He came around the corner of the room and saw the soldier in his own cage. He looked almost completely human, very different from the nearly-gone husk the puppet had met at the train station the other time. “Are you alright? Let me get you out.”

It was easy enough to break off the lock of the cage with his Legion arm, and the soldier stumbled out. “God, you don’t know how glad I am to see another sane person.”

“I am glad to see you too,” the puppet said honestly. The human looked…not dead, but very unwell. The puppet took out a golden coin fruit and held it out on his palm. “Here, a local fruit.”

“Thanks, I am parched,” he replied gratefully, and took the fruit. He ate it immediately, making a startled noise as he chewed. “Saints, that is refreshing. Nice to be reminded that this hell isn’t all there is to Krat.” The blue scales across his neck did not fade, and the puppet’s springs tightened. Atkinson stumbled over to a desk in the corner, scattered with scientific tools, and pulled paper and pen towards him. He started writing, feverishly, as he spoke. “The suburbs are sealed off. There’s no escape. Communications cut off too: someone planned this.” He snorted bitterly. “Doubt I’ll ever know who or why. Above my pay grade. I’m the last one from my squad that I know for sure’s alive. Our commander was one of the first to fall: me and my partner had to take a group each, try to divide and conquer.” He straightened, and looked at the scales on his hand. “Not much conquering.”

“Is your partner alive?” The puppet asked.

“Yes,” Atkinson said firmly. “Of course. She took a team to the Grand Exhibition; we had found fliers in the city saying it was a refuge, that the Alchemists—” he turned his head and spat on the ground, and the puppet’s gears ground in surprise. He had never seen that done before. “—had made some kind of cure. Based on what I’ve seen here I highly doubt it, but my partner…my partner is as tough as they come. If anyone’s alive in the city it’s her.” He finished his writing and folded the paper. With a straight back, he held it out to the puppet. “If you ever see her…please do me the honor of giving this to her. Her name’s Belle. She’s…” he smiled, but it was more pain than joy. “She’s a blonde woman, tall as an Amazon and twice as forthright. If you get near her, you’ll know it’s her.”

The puppet hesitated in taking the letter. “Don’t you…wouldn’t you prefer to give it to her yourself?”

Atkinson shook his head, and pressed the letter forwards even more insistantly until the puppet took it. “No, Master Stalker. You see the other unfortunates around us? We have been subjected to the same experiments. Soon I too will lose all my humanity, mind and body and all. I would never want my partner to see me like that.” He lifted his chin and held out his hands to the side. “I’d prefer to die a human, if it’s all the same to you.”

“But what if there’s a cure still to be found?” Gemini piped up desperately. Atkinson’s eyes darted to the lamp but he did not move. “What if we…what if…surely there’s another way.”

“There isn’t,” the puppet said gently. No matter how he thought of it, even if he managed to get Giango to make the cure before the soldier fully became a Carcass, the cure could not reverse damage already done…and he understood the desire to die as oneself. “If you are sure, Mr Atkinson.”

He nodded once, proudly. “Yes. If you do meet my Belle, tell her…tell her Atkinson died as a soldier.”

The puppet set his electric glaive aside and drew the modified dagger from his belt. He gave the Stalker’s salute, and stabbed the man through his bared heart.

***

“Poor old Murphy,” Gemini said sympathetically. “Or, well…proto-Murphy, I guess.”

The puppet grunted, planting his foot against the corpse at the right angle so he could shove against it and reseat his dislocated ankle joint. “Sure.” Proto-Murphy was made out of heavier materials than the final Murphy, and of course the green monster constantly secreted acid…all in all, while the puppet was proud to have defeated the swamp creature he was feeling a little worse for wear. “Gem, help me look for something: a sword. Near the tunnel, probably.”

“You got it, buddy!”

They combed through the puppet parts in the creature’s lair, and a few human parts too. Eventually something lit up blue in the puppet’s vision and he successfully retrieved the Two Dragons sword. “It's too bad,” he said quietly. 

“Huh?” Gemini asked. “You got the thing, that’s good right? And defeated a pretty intense monster before doing it! —oh, nice saw blade by that foot there if you want it.”

The puppet did scoop up the saw and explained: “This is the Hound’s weapon. We are a little bit ahead of schedule, so while it was unlikely that the Hound—the real one—was still alive, I thought it just might be possible. But no: if the sword is here it means he died here already.” He combed the area a little more and found a broken bow and a flask that might have also been part of Alidoro’s gear, but no more evidence. He supposed the monster had eaten him.

“That’s too bad,” Gemini said. “From what you said it seemed like the genuine article was probably a great guy, huh?”

“He saved lives during the Tower collapse,” the puppet said. “And he was Eugénie’s brother.”

Gemini’s chirps briefly dissolved into static before he managed to talk again and say, “...you don’t have to tell me these big revelations so casually, pal! You told me so much stuff yet there’s still details you left out that are as important as that?!”

“It’s hard to know what’s important,” the puppet defended himself. 

“Can’t tell the trees from the forest, I guess. Well…are we gonna tell her?”

“Not until I have proof,” the puppet said firmly. “We should get that when I kill Parrot.”

“If you say so,” Gemini sighed. “Guess we’ll just put a pin in the whole ‘long lost relative murdered’ topic.”

The puppet hummed, and returned to the fallen monster to cut out its Ergo. “We have another thing to fetch here before we return. Or, well, not a thing: a puppet.”

It went much faster than the last time now that the puppet knew all the spots to avoid and conversely all the ones where resources were. Before long he had made it to the short tunnel where the broken puppet was lying beside the Stargazer. Their red ergo flared as he approached and their jarring voice said, “They do exist! Puppets like me, not bound by the Grand Covenant!”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed, beginning to quickly repair the Stargazer. “There are not a lot of us, it seems, but there are some.”

“Without the Covenant, my kind hates me,” the broken puppet said. “As soon as they see me they want to destroy me. That is probably why there are so few of us.” They released a crackling burst of static that might have been an imitation of a sigh. “Monsters, humans, puppets…they all hate me. But I want to be friends! With humans.”

“It is hard but not impossible,” the puppet said. He crouched beside the Stargazer and patted the broken puppet’s immobile shoulder. “There are some good humans who want to be friends with good puppets.”

“What a nice thought,” the broken puppet buzzed, sounding a little more cheerful. “I want to be friends with you too! You seem nice. And very…advanced. Like a human! Do you know human things? Do you know about feelings? I think I have feelings, but it is so hard to figure anything out. Would you help me? I would do you a favor in return!”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed. “I would like to be your friend no matter what, but I do have a favor you can do for me as well. It might be risky, though, so you can say no instead and I will still be your friend.”

“Oh, no!” the broken puppet said, so loudly their voice broke and screeched before settling back into being understandable. “No, please! I would love to do you a favor! Even being alive is risky, isn’t it? But I’m glad to be alive anyway.” 

“I want to bury something at the edge of the swamp,” the puppet said. “I hoped to hide you where you can see the hiding spot, and then when I return you can let me know if anyone found it.”

“That doesn’t sound risky at all,” the broken puppet said cheerfully. “Of course! You would have to move me, though. I can see and think and talk but the rest of my body does not obey me.”

The puppet nodded firmly. “Very well. This monad lamp is my friend Gemini, by the way.”

“Hello, Gemini!”

“Hey, buddy,” Gemini said warmly. “You must be tough as an old boot to hang on out here like this! Let’s all be pals.”

“Oh, woah,” the broken puppet said softly. “Two friends. That is so many! Oh, oh, oh.”

“What you’re feeling right now is probably called happiness,” the puppet said helpfully, already holding up his side of the bargain. “Is it a problem if we leave your legs behind? It would make you easier to carry.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” the broken puppet said. With a staticky laugh they added, “Happiness! It’s my favorite feeling, so far, I think. It feels warm and alive. Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” the puppet said, since humans liked someone better when they were polite. The broken puppet should learn that too. “I’ll start detaching your legs now.” The broken puppet and Gemini chatted as he did, and once he was finished he shifted the broken puppet to a more upright position and frowned. “Your left arm is also sparking a lot, can we leave that behind as well?”

“Sure,” the broken puppet agreed. “It’s not like I’m using it.”

The puppet carried them all the way back to the green monster’s den, and left them sitting to the side against a boulder with Gemini for company as he retrieved the Arm from where he had made a stash for it in the tunnel after taking it from the train. In the monster’s lair he slowly turned, looking at all the cave walls, until he spotted what looked like a small ledge to one side about halfway up. He tucked the Arm through his belt and went to the monster’s corpse. With a bit of effort he managed to hack off one of the claws: even just holding it the acid slowly started to eat away at his hands, so he dug up a leather boot from one of the heaps of parts, shook out the remains from inside it, and slid it over the blunt end of the claw. That secured he used his Puppet String to launch himself up to the little ledge. It was just barely wide enough to stand on, so he rammed his legion arm fist into the rock face to make a handhold. Once he was stable, he broke a bottle of carcass body fluid against the rock where it met the ledge, then started ramming the spike against the same spot. He grunted at the effort and almost unbalanced himself a couple of times, but in a minute or so he had a little tunnel melted and broken into the stone. He discarded the spike and awkwardly stuffed the Arm into the hole. Its bluish fingertips stuck out, and he kicked some dirt at them until they disappeared. He let himself drop back to the ground then, even though he had to use a pulse cell afterwards, then went to his friends.

“Wow!” the broken puppet said as he got close. “You have very good balance! And you’re strong!”

“Yes,” the puppet said. Those features were very useful for a Stalker. “I need to put you somewhere hidden enough to protect you but where you can observe the hiding spot.”

“How about by that busted mining puppet there?” Gemini piped up helpfully. 

“Oh, yes, I think I can see from there,” the broken puppet agreed. As they were carried to the spot they added thoughtfully, “Being able to help my friends feels…well, it feels good. But different from ‘happiness’. What feeling is this?”

The puppet paused, feeling his brow furrow. It was a good question. “Maybe ‘altruism’,” Gemini offered. “Or just good ol’ 'friendship'!”

“There are many different feelings of friendship,” the broken puppet said, their words so quiet they were almost hidden by the static. “How wonderful. I want to discover them all!”

“We’ll come back for you as soon as we can. Right, pal?”

“Yes,” the puppet said firmly. “If it is in my power I will return for you. I want to find a way to fix you so you can walk and use your hands.” The mining puppet they were by was giving him an idea, and he quickly salvaged the parts that he thought would help.

“That would be very exciting! But even if you can’t, I can stay quite busy here, just thinking. Thinking takes up a lot of time and energy! But I’m glad I can.”

They bid farewell to their new friend and left through the tunnel to the station. “We will come back for him, right?” Gemini whispered. “He’s a really nice guy. That Ergo of his is worrying, I got a whiff of it as you brought me close and it was like battery acid. Who knows how he’s still alive at all!”

“As long as I’m alive to do it, we will,” the puppet promised. 

Chapter Text

***

While clearing the buildings that had Alchemists, the puppet had taken the supply crate from its original resting place to a more easily accessible spot. He intended to simply take it up as he passed it on the way back, but it was missing. He looked around the area and saw clear drag marks, which he followed to find the crate half-fallen inside one of the wells that buildings sometimes had around basement windows. He lifted it up and from the broken window within the well something moved. The puppet set the crate aside and bowed to the bright eyes that were watching him from within the shadows. “Hello. I was planning to take this back to our home base. Is there something in particular you needed from it?” Previously, he had always taken them straight to Polendina, but it occurred to him now that there was nothing stopping him from opening it himself. 

There was a long moment of silence filled only by quiet chiming from his lantern. “...there’s food sometimes,” the person said. Their voice was quite high, and he thought the emotion in it was defiance. 

“That’s true,” the puppet said. He put the crate on its side and figured out how to break the lock holding it closed. Inside the many compartments held a lot of materials like moonstones and defensive or repair parts, several small bags that could have either organic or inorganic contents…and a single shining red apple. “Here,” he said, and held the apple down into the window well. 

There was a long pause where nothing happened, then the person leaned out just enough to snatch it from his grasp. A human, quite small, unwashed, with an ill-fitting filter mask over the lower half of their face. They retreated completely into the darkness and there was a brief flurry of unpleasant mouth-sounds as they devoured the fruit. The puppet waited patiently, closing the crate back up. After a while, the eyes looked out at him again. “Why you got a puppet arm?”

“Because I am a puppet Stalker made by Geppetto to deal with this disaster,” the puppet said succinctly. He twisted the Puppet String where the person could see, then pushed the sleeve back on his other arm and showed a patch where the swamp monster’s acid had dissolved false skin that had not yet recovered. Under the damaged covering his metal struts and pulleys were clearly visible. 

“How come you’re not crazy?” the person asked warily.

“I suppose Master Geppetto made me this way,” the puppet said. “There aren’t many puppets in this area right now, are there?”

“Lot of ‘em at first,” they answered sullenly. “Then the monsters and the Alchemist bastards started fightin’ em. Now it's mostly monsters.”

The puppet nodded. “Would you like to come back to our home base? There are people staying in Hotel Krat: it has been safe until now.” He looked around. “This place is very dangerous for a human alone,” he observed neutrally.

The person just grumbled. After another long thinking pause they emerged slightly from the shadow and crouched there in the bottom of the window well. “I made it myself this long,” they said.

“You have.” The puppet nodded to them respectfully. “I am impressed. You are smaller than me by a good bit. How did you manage it? Are you a good fighter?”

“I’m a good hider,” they sniffed, and stood up. The hair was probably pale originally, and it was long and loose under their cap. The eyes that glared at him were grey. “...how do I know you’re not just luring me out to kill me?”

“You don’t. But,” the puppet pointed out, “–it would be pretty easy for me to kill you. I could have just thrown an explosive the first time I saw you.” He held out his hand the way humans did when meeting each other. “I don’t want to kill you. I was created to help. Pleased to meet you: I am the Stalker Cricket.”

Very slowly and reluctantly, the person reached out and shook his hand. “I’m Rebecca," they said.

“And this is Gemini.”

“Hello, Miss Rebecca!” the cricket chirped. He was trying not to be loud but the puppet could hear his excitement. “Boy are we glad to see you. It gets to be pretty grim seeing no new faces that aren’t, you know. Dead.”

She crossed her arms, and the puppet saw that her left arm ended at the wrist. “How you gonna keep me from getting killed by a monster if we’re just walking along the streets in broad day like idiots?”

The puppet lifted his weapon. “I will protect you.” He thought about logistics. “We should move quickly, and I don’t get tired the same way humans do. I will need one arm for carrying the crate and the other for carrying my weapon.”

“S’pose I could ride on your back,” Rebecca said doubtfully. “‘Least that way you’d be between me and anything we run into.”

The puppet pictured it and was satisfied. “Yes, that will work. Do you have any equipment you need to bring with you?” She ducked back into the basement and emerged with a satchel over her shoulder. He knelt down to be closer to her height and waited.

“...you’re strange,” she said eventually, carefully wrapping her arms around his shoulders and legs around his waist as he stood back up. When they were balanced she left only the arm without a hand draped over his shoulder, leaning back slightly. 

“It seems so.” The puppet shifted from foot to foot, getting used to the change in balance. “Can you reach–? No, here, let’s do this.” He worked around her leg to detach two throwables from his belt and instead attach them to the leather strap that crossed over his right shoulder. They hung one in front and one behind, and he felt her examining the one behind. “Throwing cell on the back—puppets are easily damaged by electricity. The one on the front is thermite: fire works well against the carcass monsters.”

“...you want me to throw them?” she asked doubtfully. 

“Yes? If necessary.” The puppet picked up the crate and then held up his weapon for her to see. “Between us we each have one free arm. If there are multiple enemies you might help.”

“...I suppose.” She sounded strangely pleased. 

She was deathly silent at first as he resumed his trek to the hotel. Her breaths in his ear were fast and shallow—frightened? Her legs were very tight around his waist too. Gradually the tension eased as they made it through several streets without meeting violence. “Is there anything I should tell you about the hotel so that you feel ready?” the puppet asked. It usually made him feel more prepared and confident when Gemini told him about a new area he was entering. 

“It’s safe?” was her first question. It was one the puppet had already answered, but he did again anyway.

“Yes. I suppose no place is completely safe, but so far no people who want to hurt us have gotten in, and most of the people there are not fighters.”

“Is there a lot of people there?”

The puppet considered. The hotel always felt very full of life when he returned to it, but he supposed that didn’t make it ‘a lot’. “There are 6 people other than me there. Lady Antonia owns the hotel, and her puppet butler Polendina is with her. He is safe for humans: he never was taken by the frenzy. My creator Master Geppetto is there. There is a weaponsmith named Eugénie. She is my friend. And Master Venigni with his puppet butler Pulcinella.”

Rebecca made a cat-like noise on his back. “Venigni? My da hated him.”

“Really? What for?”

“Da was a bricklayer,” she muttered. “Then puppets started doin’ it. Couldn’t hardly get money for rent after: had to share with three other families.”

The puppet hummed, intrigued. Most of the puppets he had seen did jobs that took physical strength, or were dangerous, or otherwise involved serving humans in some way. He hadn’t really considered what humans who had done those jobs before did after. “I think I understand. I was made to be a Stalker: I don’t know what I would do if I could not do this job any more.” She grunted, agreeing, then fell silent as a Carcass shambled around the corner and he took it down with a hurled thermite and two swipes of his electric glaive. 

It took about an hour to return to the hotel, and Rebecca said more and more comments and questions as they went. Eventually Gemini had to take over replying to her as the talking proved increasingly difficult for the puppet. It wasn’t like she talked as much as any of his hotel friends, but it turned out talking with strangers was harder. He had forgotten: it felt like so long ago that the people at the hotel had been strangers, and of course back then the puppet had hardly spoken at all. They did make it back to the hotel, and the puppet stopped outside the door. The security system recognized him now, but it asked Rebecca, “Who are you?”

After a startled pause she said, “...Rebecca Jorden?”

“Are you a puppet or a human?”

“A human.”

“Grand Covenant’s Fourth Law: a puppet cannot lie. Welcome to Hotel Krat.” The doors creaked open slightly and the puppet started to push them fully apart, but Rebecca pulled at the back of his cravat until it cut into his throat and he stopped. When she was sure he wasn’t moving, she slid down his back, stumbling a little as she landed.

“I don’t mind—”

“Shut up! I’m fine. Let’s go.” There was an air of injured pride to her bearing, and the puppet nodded and went in without further questioning. 

The first person he saw was Sophia: knowing Rebecca wouldn’t see the same, he just nodded to her in greeting. Polendina wasn’t at the front desk, but Pulcinella was just visible, standing in the spot the puppet already had mentally set aside for him. It was…a relief, to have him back where he should be. As they approached the alcoves where the technicians worked, Venigni called out. “My friend! You are back sooner than—” he cut himself off as he saw the person trailing behind the puppet. “Ah! My manners!” He left whatever he was working with on the craft machine pedestal and whipped off his heavy leather work apron, bowing elaborately. “Lorenzini Venigni, at your humble service. So wonderful to see a new face! Did our friend save you as he did me?” He waited—for a name, the puppet realized.

“This is Rebecca,” he said helpfully. 

Rebecca was glaring over her filter mask at the inventor. “My da hated you,” she said darkly after a moment.

“Oh?” Venigni clasped his hands behind his back and tilted his head, face falling serious. “It is true that I am a person who seems to be either loved or hated. From your phrasing, am I correct that your father is no longer with us?”

“Puppet killed him,” she said shortly.

“I see.” He took a long step closer and sat on his heels, making his height even with her own. “Please do not think I compare my feelings with your own when I say this: I am grieved that I will never be able to meet him and change his mind.” He put his chin on his hand, looking her over carefully. “Indeed, he must have been a truly admirable person, to raise a daughter so strong and clever! Have you been surviving without him long, Miss Rebecca?” She shrugged. He nodded and stood up, then clapped his hands together. She jumped. “Well, this hotel is a fine refuge. I hope he will find a level of peace in knowing his daughter safe within it! Here we are all equal as recipients of Lady Antonia’s generous sanctuary. I hope that from within its walls I may yet find methods to in some way better the condition of Krat for all us survivors, in honor of those like your father who were not so fortunate.” He bowed to her gracefully. “If you should also hate me, be it as a personal preference or in honor of him, I vow to accept it with no complaint or argument. If instead after some period of acquaintance you should decide I am not so very bad, I have every confidence that so capable a person as yourself will be able to honor him in a plentitude of other ways instead!”

Rebecca’s eyes had lost a little of their narrow enmity. Instead she looked more than a bit baffled. “God’s wounds, you don’t half talk, do you?”

“It is true,” Venigni said, with a gradual return of his usual brightness. “I have on occasion thought that as much of my success as can be attributed to my genius, I must also place a certain degree of culpability upon my habit to continue to speak after all more tactful voices have lost their words. Speaking of genius—your new arm, compagno!” He plucked Flamberge from the craft machine and presented it with a flourish. He was holding it rather oddly, and the puppet realized he was making sure Rebecca could see it too. “Stylish, no? Miss Eugénie found time to aid me in the detail work, after completing her own project, since repairing my good friend Pulcinella took up a good deal of my waking hours while you have been gone.” He quickly ran through the design and function: all things the puppet knew, of course, but he listened diligently anyway. “I will leave it to the side here for when and if you want to swap it out—but, my friend, what is this? You have encountered a form of acid weapon, perhaps?”

“I do want to talk to you about that, but first—Rebecca will need to clean up and eat. Where is Polendina?”

“Ah! Attending the ladies at lunch.” He addressed Rebecca directly: “Miss Eugénie will likely be your best resource for clothing, for the moment, until your own have been laundered. She is woman- rather than girl-sized, but my own wardrobe I expect would be unwelcome as well as tremendously oversized—and you see how hard our friend here is on his own clothing.”

“I’ll be back,” the puppet said with dignity, and beckoned for the girl. They made for the hallway that led to the breakfast parlor (it was called that but all meals were taken there, not just breakfast) and after a moment she let out a frustrated-sounding growl. “What’s wrong?”

“My da always said that Venigni was a big phony. But he seemed…” she trailed off. “Well, anyway. He’s odder than a three-dollar bill.”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed, taking her meaning from context even if the phrasing was strange. “But he wants to help people.”

They got to the door and the puppet remembered to bow her in like a gentleman. Inside Lady Antonia and Eugénie were at one of the small round tables, Polendina standing against a wall, and they both looked up as the door opened. “Master Stalker!” Eugénie said. “You’re back so soon—and with a guest. Hello, I’m Eugénie.”

“And I am Lady Antonia.” Rebecca had nodded with relative politeness to Eugénie, but when she looked at Antonia she stepped back slightly behind the puppet. Lady Antonia gave her the best smile she could, with her face as it was. “I welcome you to my hotel, child. I hope you will not be frightened off by my illness: the large structure you saw in the lobby is a Stargazer, so any Ergo spores in the building are absorbed. That is why we don’t even need a filter such as yours for safety: you would only potentially  risk contamination from me through direct physical contact, and I swear to you that I will never endanger you that way.”

“Not like you could chase me down,” Rebecca muttered, eyes on Antonia’s wheeled chair, then when the lady chuckled she startled and made an awkward bobbing gesture, bending at the knees. “Um, that is, thank you.” Her eyes now were fixed on the table, and the puppet saw her throat work as she swallowed.

“Have the last oat cake,” Eugénie said: her sharp eyes had also caught the target of the new guest’s gaze. “They’re a bit dry, but filling.” The girl made for the table, hesitantly. She looked back at the puppet at one point: unsure what she wanted, he tried to nod encouragement. She devoured the cake and Eugénie stood up, brushing off her hands. “Polendina, could you draw a bath in my room?”

The puppet butler looked to Antonia, who nodded and waved a hand towards the door. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and obediently left to do so.  

“Come on,” Eugénie told them briskly, nodding to Antonia and going to follow Polendina. “You’ll feel better once you’re clean. After being in the workshop tower collapse, making it here and getting to wash up and change clothes was the first time I felt anything even a little like safe. What’s your name?”

She wasn’t dragging her feet, the puppet was glad to see. It had been wise to carry her here, to conserve her energy. “Rebecca.” She shook herself like she was shaking off a thought, and squared her narrow shoulders. “But nobody calls me that. My dad and brother and all, they just call me Mouse.”

“All right,” Eugenie said, and looked sideways at her. “But I don’t much care what they call you. Do you want me to call you Mouse? Or is Rebecca better.”

The girl blinked up at her. “...um, both are okay.” 

“Understood,” Eugénie said firmly, then they were at the door to her quarters. She looked Mouse over from head to toe as they all entered, then started digging through the drawers against the side wall. “My things will be too big, of course, but if we roll up the legs of the trousers and you use your suspenders they will do until we get something better. My shirts might fall off your shoulders, but we can pin them tighter for now.” She pulled the things out as she spoke, then held a hand out expectantly. “I’ll take your mask. I’m no seamstress but I know how to stitch leather and change a filter.” She pointed at the puppet with her thumb. “Plus, this one is a pack rat. I’m sure he has spare filters somewhere.”

The animal books had contained information about rats but he wasn’t sure what made one a pack rat. He did have filters, though, so he nodded. Slowly, reluctantly, Mouse took off the filter. With it gone, the smallness and paleness of her face was clear, and her eyes suddenly looked enormous and rather frightened. “Eugénie will take good care of it,” the puppet said, wanting to help but knowing no other words that might do it. “You can trust her. She made my mask: isn’t it grand? It’s a cricket.”

“It’s rough,” Eugénie said, her ears strangely pink, and passed the clothing to the girl. “Polendina should be finishing up with the tub. I’m pretty sure you are old enough to not need help bathing?”

“Not since I was three,” she said in scathing tones. She took something from her bag; a doll, or at least the head of one, and tucked it in the crook of her arm.

“Good. If you don’t wash thoroughly, your hair and feet and behind your ears and all, I will toss you back in and go at you with the scrub brush the same as I would a muddy pair of boots.” At this threat, the puppet tried to give Rebecca a commiserating expression. She looked about as excited for a bath as the puppet ever was. But she sighed, longsuffering, and started for the door before slowing down.

“That puppet is still in there?” she said abruptly.

“He’ll leave if you tell him, he’s just drawing your bath. Polendina is good,” Eugénie said, which was true, but the puppet could see it was not helpful. Instead he unclipped the throwing cell from his harness and attached it to the back of Rebecca’s suspenders. “Master Stalker!” the technician said sharply. “Water and electricity do not mix!”

“That is true,” the puppet said to Mouse, and took from his bag also the chef knife he had found at the train station. “If you’re at a distance, the throwing cell: if you’re close or in water, the knife.” 

She was looking at him with narrow, considering eyes as she shuffled the clothes to her left arm so she could take the knife with her only hand. “You’re a really strange puppet,” she said. “But thanks.”

“Please don’t kill my friend unless he actually tries to hurt you, though,” he added hastily. “Please.”

She snorted and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, since he’s your friend, and you said please.”

They waited until Polendina had left the bathroom and splashing noises started before leaving. “I have something I was hoping you can make me,” the puppet said as they made for the lobby. “A specific sort of destructive device.”

“I do know my way around destructive devices,” she said, looking very interested. “Speaking of which, I finished your new arm! Let me show it to you.”

The puppet nodded, quietly pleased. Venigni was once again working on his own Legion arm and did not look up as they approached. Eugénie had Fulminis out on her work surface, and she presented it to him with what seemed to possibly be a mix of pride and hesitation. “It’s nothing to one made by Master Geppetto or Master Venigni, of course. But I hope it will still serve a purpose for you.”

“It is beautiful,” the puppet said honestly. He took off his mask and set it down, because Eugénie was not Geppetto or another enemy and he wanted her to see the truth in his face, how happy he was that she had put so much thought in this gift for him. He immediately began detaching his Puppet String to put it on, and she helped him. “It will be very good for fighting puppets,” he said with complete earnestness. True, the next few destinations had more corpses than puppets, but he could still use it well. 

“That’s what I thought,” she said, and watched as he shed his coat (with its newly body-fluid-eaten holes) and set it aside. “By the way….” 

When she didn’t finish her sentence after several moments the puppet looked up from seating Fulminis’ legion plug in his arm socket. “Yes?”

Eugénie’s eyes behind her glasses met him squarely. “I owe you an apology.”

The puppet was genuinely baffled, and for a split second wondered if she was somehow remembering the former time line…but no, she had done him no wrong then either. “Why?”

“One of the first things I said when I met you was ‘everyone hates puppets’,” she said quietly, dropping her gaze and nudging her glasses up with the back of her hand. “I have never been an…overly friendly person, but I don’t like to think myself cruel. Saying that to you, knowing you were a puppet only trying to help, was very unkind.”

“You are not cruel, Eugénie,” the puppet said, astonished at the very thought. “I understood what you meant. You…” he gathered his courage and finished, “...you are my friend.” (he tried not to say it as a question, but his tone did tip up a little at the end.)

“I hope so,” she said, pulling herself up onto her stool and crossing her arms tightly over her chest. “I like to think so.” Her brow furrowed, and for a moment she looked fiercely disappointed. “I didn’t even ask your name!”

“I don’t have one,” the puppet tried to reassure her. It only made her look more discontented. 

“Master Geppetto didn’t give you one?” she said. She sounded disapproving enough that the puppet’s springs reacted with fear at the thought that she might say something against his father where the man could hear. “That doesn’t seem right. Even Polendina and Pulcinella have names, don’t they? And they aren’t half as advanced as you. If Master Geppetto was surprised by you becoming active before he had one picked, he has had time since then to rectify that. Was it him who suggested Cricket as your Stalker name?”

The puppet shook his head, and then said something that he shouldn’t. “I have found out…it seems like he designed my appearance after his dead son.” It felt like clean air and fresh energy, being able to say it aloud. “I think if he…I think when he calls me son, it is not me he is looking at. And if he gave me a name, he would have to admit what I am not.”

Eugénie looked enormously taken-aback. “Really?” she murmured. “Master Geppetto is such a private man. I never knew…” she shook herself and waved her hand. “Well, it doesn’t matter to the issue at hand. You’re here now and you need a name for people to call you by. Unless you’re satisfied with Cricket?”

“I can just…give myself a name?” the puppet asked in a small voice.

“Of course!” she said so strongly that Venigni looked up in surprise from across the aisle. She shook her head at the inventor, and when he returned to his work she continued more quietly but no less intently. “You know, my birth family probably gave me a name…or maybe they didn’t, since they thought little enough of me to abandon me. The orphanage did not have a name for me, and no one there knew much about the Country of the Morning. One of them found a newspaper article with names of politicians and ambassadors from that land, but while I don’t remember much of the language even then, I remember that they seemed like boy names to me.”

“So instead they just named you Eugénie?” the puppet asked. He had seen the message from the Hound saying that it was not her ‘real’ name, and had wondered where it came from.

“Nope,” she said. “They named me ‘Rose’.”

The puppet rocked back on his heels, finding himself astonished at this news. He didn't know why at first until he tried saying outloud: “...I can’t think of you as ‘Rose’ at all.”

“Neither could I,” she said wryly. “It’s not a bad name—I kept it as a surname, actually, though these days I only use that when signing contracts. No, Eugénie is the name I picked for myself. It felt like me.”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed. “You are Eugénie.”

“Because I chose it,” she said firmly. “If you want ideas we can give them, but since your maker didn’t give you a name as far as I’m concerned it’s best for you to pick one. One that you like.”

The puppet blinked up at her. “...now?”

“I mean, you can take some time,” she said, laughing a little. “It’s not an emergency. But don’t procrastinate on it forever, okay?”

There was so much to do, so much to handle, that devoting thought to this seemed vaguely selfish. But it also sounded so good that the puppet nodded emphatically. “Yes. I will…think about options.” Gemini would help him, surely. 

“Good! Now. About that destructive device?”

“Do you have paper?” While she dug some out for him, a voice called across the lobby and he looked up to see Antonia, being pushed in her chair by Polendina from the breakfast parlor to the music gallery where she often spent the day. 

“I wanted to say hello before you dashed away again, child! I hope you are as well as you seem?”

The puppet trotted over so she wouldn’t have to yell. “Yes, Lady Antonia. I’m sorry: I ruined the blouse you gave me.”

“I have plenty where that came from,” she said fondly. “I’m glad the old thing saw use. Polendina and I will have to look through my old wardrobe more, both for you and for something that might be adapted for our young guest.”

Ah. He should probably…the puppet folded his hands in front of himself. “Lady Antonia, I hope it is all right that I brought Rebecca here. Father told me to not tell people about this place if I could help it, but…father doesn’t own the hotel, you do.”

“Bright boy,” she said, still smiling kindly but with something sharp behind it now. “Yes, you chose rightly. Antonia Cerasani is lord of this manor, not Giuseppe Geppetto. I will make sure that old man remembers that, next time he deigns to emerge from his cave. You did well to bring her, and I would ask you to offer this as sanctuary to any others you think are in need.” She then inclined her head gracefully, and motioned for Polendina to continue pushing her.

Back at Eugénie’s station she had paper and pencil laid out for him, so he started to roughly sketch his idea. She stopped him with a dismayed noise. “You hold that pencil like a knife,” she said. “Here, like this.” She demonstrated by holding it herself, then shaped the puppets fingers to match. It was a little awkward at first but it did give him a lot of control over the tip. 

“It needs to be like a mine, but instead of exploding out it needs to explode in,” he explained. “Enough to penetrate a slab as thick as so, stone or metal or both, that it is attached to. It needs to be able to be attached instantly to it even if it is hanging upside-down, and to have some sort of trigger mechanism that I can activate from out of reach, probably quite a few paces away. I took some pieces from a mining puppet I found—wouldn’t this here serve as a good mechanism?”

Eugénie was completely focused on his shaky sketch and letters, and she nodded slowly. “Hm. It will be tricky. The trigger, especially. I wonder if…” she raised her voice. “Venigni!”

“Whose dulcet tones call my name?” Venigni strode over, looking delighted to be included. “Oh-ho, it is fair Eugénie, she of the sharp mind and sharp weapons!”

“You are a silly man,” Eugénie told him with an air like someone who had been forced into a confession. “Come here and help me make this strange mine for Cricket.”

“A mine, you say?” He leaned over the bench. “I see parts from my Mk III…hm, what a list of requirements!”

“I also have something else for you.” He pulled out the broken wavelength decoder. “I met Alchemists in the area near where the Workshop Tower was. They were doing strange experiments with a kind of blue elixir, and one of them seemed to be using this device to command a puppet. It broke in the fight but if it could be repaired….”

“That is most alarming!” he cried, taking the device and looking over it. “It looks a little slapdash, to be truthful, but the construction is as intricate as anything I could make. It was for communication, you say? It would most certainly be an advantage if we can understand the communications of the puppets, the Alchemists, or both! To think they may be the cause of this whole disaster….”

“I also wondered…you fixed Pulcinella very well,” the puppet said diffidently. “Is it also too much to ask…if I encounter any other puppets who need repair…?”

“Any friend of yours is a friend of Venigni's," he swore, hand over heart. “It would be so.”

After briefly greeting Sophia and switching their gear specifically for Carcasses, they stepped out the door that led to Elysion Boulevard, now firmly on their way to the Cathedral. Gemini burst out: “You did it, pal! You saved someone who you didn’t save the first time, right?”

“Oh.” The puppet felt warmth. “That’s true! I never met Mouse before.”

“So it can be done!” The cricket cheered. “We really can make a difference! With the things you know and all your incredible skills, things must be on the upswing, right? You’ve got Venigni working on that thing—that’s the puppet translator thing, right? So he’ll have that earlier, and you already know all about the problems that are coming up next…think of how much we can do! Aaaaand,” he said, sly, “—we can pick a name you can introduce yourself by to all the people you're gonna save. Whaddya say, pal? I’ve got a hundred suggestions all loaded and ready to go!”

“Well,” the puppet said, feeling more cheerful than he had in a good while, “Go ahead and start firing, then.”

***

Chapter Text

***

This time while going through the factory the puppet took notice of a heavy leather apron hung on a wall hook: it was the sort that Eugénie and Venigni used when working with hot metal, and it occurred to him that it might also be useful against the corrosive blood of carcasses. It took a bit of shifting of his supplies, and it was going to take him a minute to get used to the weight at the front, but it had several wide pockets that were very useful. “Looking like a proper Technician here, buddy,” Gemini said as the puppet finished fastening the ties.

He paused. “Is that bad? Should I look more like a Stalker?”

“You should look like whatever you wanna look like, Frederick!”

“Nn,” the puppet said.

“No? Too bad, I thought that one might be a winner. But not to worry, pal: we’ll find you a name you like even if I have to make it up myself!”

“Thanks, Gemini,” the puppet said.

“You got it…Freddie?” the puppet shook his head. “Worth a try. Did I go through all the famous local actors already?”

“Yes, you were on composers, now,” the puppet said, and listened to the next array of names all the way to Moonlight Town.

***

The puppet took a breath deep enough that he felt his bellows pressing against the inside of his chest cavity as they approached the cable car. The Stalker with the large pickaxe was standing under the awning and watching as he approached. “Did you want to go up, child? I’m sorry, but the train isn’t in service any more.”

“Will I have to climb the mountain?” the puppet asked politely. “I have been sent to investigate the Cathedral.”

“Sent?” they said first, then shook their head as though shaking off the thought. “The Cathedral isn’t the sanctuary it once was. Those who went up there…never returned. I cannot say for certain what happened, but I do know this: the Cathedral is off limits. Forever.”

“But I must go.”

“If you’re so determined to pass, prove to me I am not sending you directly to your death.” Through the eyeholes of the dog mask dark eyes were watching him sharply. “Are you a Stalker, then?”

The puppet gave the Stalker salute with his fire spear. “Yes, I’m Cricket.”

“Cricket?” they said, sounding rather astonished. “How quickly people forget. Then again, I suppose there is no one left to protest. Most of the Stalkers perished when the Workshop Tower collapsed.” They looked down at the dirt. “As for me, I’m as good as dead. A sinner, moreover, who lost everything she ever loved.”

“Do you intend to just let death take you, then?” The puppet asked neutrally. “Or is there enough life still in you to help people more than by simply recommending they leave?”

She was silent for a long moment. “...who is it that sent you, impertinent child?”

“Master Geppetto,” he answered promptly. “He, along with Master Venigni and a few other survivors, including two other sane puppets, are at Hotel Krat. I am being sent out on missions to try and solve this crisis.”

The Sweeper’s grip on her pickaxe shifted, her stance no longer weary but tensed as if for battle. “‘Two other’—you too are a puppet, then?”

He was getting a little tired of saying it by now, but the puppet answered: “Yes. I am a puppet Stalker designed by Master Gepetto to try and deal with this crisis.”

She watched him for a long moment. She did not relax, but neither did she make any motions to attack. “Clearly, if you speak true, you are like no puppet I have ever seen. And I suppose if anyone were to make such a thing it would be Geppetto. How, then, are you not Frenzied?”

The puppet hung his spear across his back and crossed his arms as he decided how to start. “Tell me, do you know of puppets with awakened egos?”

The dog mask tilted to the side. “It is a phrase I have heard before. The murderous puppet whose destruction earned the Legendary Stalker her epithet: I recall such a phrase being used regarding him.”

The puppet nodded. “Yes, I suppose he was one. Sometimes a puppet will develop a certain degree of…individuality, independence. No one really seems to know what causes it; Master Venigni said that two maid puppets can be made on the same day and one can be awakened and one not. Both the puppets at the hotel have been working for their masters for a long time, often doing complex tasks, so perhaps it is in that service they developed enough independence that whatever mass hysteria took the other puppets spared them. For me, Master Geppetto has made me very complex: the more advanced and human-like a puppet is, the more likely it seems to happen.”

Her stance had softened a little as she listened intently. “So you say Geppetto has made you with the goal of…dealing with this crisis?”

The puppet nodded. “I have been sent out to rescue people more than once, and to investigate different locations. He and Master Venigni keep working to try and find out the source of the Frenzy also. I need to investigate the Cathedral next to find out exactly what happened to the people there.”

There was a long pause. “...I suppose I have no right to stop someone as…determined, as you. That previous statement about helping people—did you intend to ask me to accompany you?” Her voice was still even, but the puppet somehow sensed a kind of dread in the question anyway.

“No,” he said. “I am used to fighting alone. I thought to ask your help because none of the people left at the hotel are fighters: these trips of mine often take some time, and it would be good for them to have a capable fighter closer to home.”

She snorted. “So certain I am a capable fighter, are you?”

“I can tell by the way you stand,” he told her honestly. “And by your determination to hold the line here. If you were able, it would also be very useful to have someone make a few trips into the part of Krat near where the Workshop Tower was.”

“To what purpose?”

“I fought Alchemists there, along with several awful creatures that seemed to be experiments of theirs, and found a survivor to take home. I told you of awakened puppets: a miner told me that it fled to the surface because the Kroud under the city is rapidly growing. It was sure that within a week or two that whole neighborhood would be destroyed. I could not look for more survivors, as I had to attend this task, but if you were able….”

She watched him long and steady until he found himself wanting to fidget. He did not. Eventually all the fight seemed to go out of her posture, and she sagged into herself. “It is a noble thought. I suppose there are worse ways to spend what life I have left. But I do not guard this station needlessly: if others should attempt to ascend, and face whatever awaits there….”

“Could we warn them off in some way?” The puppet mused, looking at the station. He didn’t want to destroy it, since he himself needed the use of it. He brightened as the thought hit him: “Oh, perhaps we could put the mark of the Black Rabbit Brotherhood here? If people see that won’t they be wary of the tram?”

“Not a bad thought,” the Stalker agreed. “How do you propose to make such a mark? There is no paint here.”

“I destroyed a few puppets on the way up here,” he said. “I have an acid spearhead: I could etch lines in the stone and then fill them with the oil? That would stay pretty clear, wouldn’t it?”

She agreed, and went to retrieve a fallen puppet while Geppetto’s puppet started carving his best rendition of the Brotherhood’s emblem on the stones that made up the tram platform. Gemini offered advice when he couldn’t remember exactly how this or that line should go. When the Stalker returned he had her hold the puppet upright for him while he unscrewed the caps in its feet and drained the oil into a couple of bottles he had picked up originally with the intent of using them to hold carcass body fluid. Once he had a decent amount in each bottle he knelt by his newly etched image and began carefully pouring the dark oil into the lines. It was oddly satisfying work, and as it went on he found that he was humming the melody to Quixotic under his breath. He was about half done when the Stalker spoke up: “How long has it been since you were built, puppet Stalker?”

He sat back on his heels and thought, working out what would be the right answer while leaving out the days lived before time rewound. “I activated about three days ago.” He returned to his work and offered, “It feels like longer. There has been a lot of fighting the whole time. I have had to destroy a lot of puppets. I fought Alchemists and monsters too.”

There was a growling sigh from the woman standing above him. “I would dearly love to ask your maker why he saw fit to design his weapon in the form of a pretty child. But then the head of the workshop union would never deign to answer questions from a mere Stalker, be she Sweeper, Bastard, or Legendary.”

That was doubtless true. When the puppet finished his work he sat back and admired it for a moment. “It is not perfect, but it looks like the one in the wanted poster. People hate the Brotherhood, don’t they?”

“Mm. I should celebrate the survival of any Stalkers after all that has happened, but those four I confess could only bring me joy by disappearing.”

“Yes, that is what I heard. They bully the people of Malum District, don’t they?”

She snorted. It was a more gentle sound than the ones she had made thus far. “A rather childish word to describe a grim and profit-centered enterprise, but not a wrong one. Yes, I am sure their survival has been no boon to the people there. Rather disgusting. They grew up on those rough streets the same as I: to deliberately make them worse after surviving them is not an uncommon decision, but no less low for all that.”

The puppet was strangely relieved. He had been thinking that he would have to kill the Brotherhood, as he’d had to kill the rat Stalker in the factory: it was nice to know that he would be doing a good thing by doing so. “Have you seen this before?” He passed her the ‘Dr Cure-All’ flyer and waited for her to read it.

“These sorts of things crop up all the time. Snake oil, usually: wise women with little spending money avoid it all.”

He traded her the confessional letter he had found in the factory, and began to carefully write a letter on the back of the flyer. After painful thought he addressed it to both Master Venigni and Master Geppetto. “I am not…optimistic, about what I will find at the cathedral. The neighborhood I have asked you to evacuate, where I killed a lot of Alchemists and those experiment creatures…. After reading that letter I started to wonder if those experiments were instead people who came voluntarily, thinking they were being treated for a cure. I am writing a letter of introduction—” he stopped and looked up at her suddenly. “Oh, what is your name, ma’am?”

“Mastiff, of the Sweepers.”

He nodded and continued the letter. It took a lot of thought to keep holding the pencil like Eugénie had taught him, but he did it pretty well. When he was done he folded it and passed it to Mastiff. “If you can bring that to the hotel, it will tell them to trust you. Please guard them as diligently as you guarded this tram.”

She nodded, very slowly. “...yes. Yes, I suppose I can only try.” She tucked the letters in the front of her coat and held down a hand to him. “Safe travels, Cricket.”

He let her pull him up and shook her hand carefully. “Safe travels to you too, Mastiff.”

***

Chapter Text

***

When Giangio was out of earshot Gemini started joking about how utterly terrible the ‘pharmacist’ was at lying. It was the same jokes he had told the previous time, but the puppet was just as glad to hear them a second time: his companion had been terribly disheartened by the awful sights of all the Carcasses. A few bad jokes were a relief, given all that…though of course they couldn’t last long, given what they encountered on their slog through the Cathedral. 

It wasn’t that the puppet enjoyed fighting Carcasses, but he was so used to it that it didn’t wear on him the same it did on Gemini. He was quick to retrieve the Archbishop’s ‘holy mark’ and bring it back to Cecile. He still didn’t really know why it pleased her so much, but she was just as grateful this time. “Oh, thank you. Just seeing the Archbishop’s holy mark renews my spirits. A tactile reminder of the quiet power of faith. I won’t forget this, Stalker.” She dug around in her robes with her unhurt hand, while the bandaged one clenched the amulet to her breast. After a moment she found the vial she was looking for and passed it to him. “Here, please, I hope this helps you in some way.” As he took it he saw that her hand was shaking. A tear slipped down her cheek, and despite the joy in receiving the mark her face was mostly etched with pain. 

The puppet fought with himself for a moment. Polendina had been collecting the golden coin fruits regularly, so when the puppet was last at the hotel there had only been one fruit ripe for him to take himself. He had been saving it with the thought of giving it to Black Cat in Malum District, in hopes that it would help the Stalker come to trust him sooner. But no. He pulled it out of his pouch and held it out to Cecile. “Here, this is called a golden coin fruit. Please eat it, it’s good.”

She hesitated with her hand in the air. “Are you sure, Master Stalker? Fresh fruit is rarer than gold, these days. You could probably trade that to a survivor better off than me and get some good Ergo for it, or other supplies.”

The puppet nodded but did not retract his hand. “It’s fine. Please.”

She took it. First she folded it between her hands along with the mark and murmured some words over it, then placed it on her tongue and chewed it carefully and slowly. As she did, more tears began to roll down her cheeks. “Oh, that’s…” she gasped when she swallowed. She clenched both her hands to her chest. “The power in that…Master Stalker, why did you give something like that to me?”

Carefully, the puppet reached out and patted her shoulder. “They’re supposed to be good for a person’s health. It seemed like…you’ve suffered a lot. I wanted to give it to you in case it would help.”

Her mouth trembled, the corners curling down sharply, and the tears did not slow. She reached out her hands: after a moment he put his right hand in them. She gestured for his legion arm as well, and when both his hands–false skin and enameled metal–were in her grasp she kissed the backs of them. He twitched at the new sensation. “Oh, Saints bless you, Stalker. You are a good soul.”

“I am?” the puppet asked, a little anxiously. He found that it had been weighing on him, acting against everything he had been told good boys did. “You really think so?”

“Those who have known true evil can know true goodness,” she said, her thumbs stroking over the backs of his hands. “Really. I was blessed enough to be saved by the Archbishop—if ever there was a truer example of goodness I have not seen it. You do not have to be a saint to be good, Master Stalker.” She let go of his hands to hug the mark close again. “Like His Holiness you have shown kindness to the undeserving, with no expectation of reward. If that is not good then what is?” 

Was that all it took? You could be a liar, and disobedient, but if you were kind you could still be good? It felt a bit like a weight had been taken off his shoulders. He sat on a pile of books and looked up at the woman. “The Archbishop saved you?”

She nodded slowly, and bowed her head. “Yes. I was…the worst of sinners. A murderer of innocent people. More of a monster than the poor twisted souls that fill the halls of this once-holy place.”

“How did he save you?” the puppet asked intently. 

“He took me in when any other man would have sent me away,” she whispered. “He showed such incredible kindness to me, such saintly patience and forgiveness and trust.”

“I meet a lot of bad people in Krat kill them. There are so few people still alive, though, that it would be so much better if I could make them good instead of having to kill them.” The puppet sat up straighter. “Do you think I could learn to do it? Like the Archbishop did for you?”

She looked at him in silence for a moment, then rested her hand on his head. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Because I’m not a saint?” The puppet wasn’t quite sure what made someone a saint. The Archbishop as he had fought him before was hardly a useful example.

“Not even saints are perfect, it’s not that. But…I had to want to change. To want to be good. And I don’t know how that came to be, only that if the Archbishop hadn’t been there to catch me I never would have been able to make that leap.” She stroked his hair gently. “You are a good, kind lad. But that doesn’t mean you could have saved me from the depths of my wickedness.”

It wasn’t a very tidy answer. The puppet sighed. “So it’s not possible?”

“All you can do is extend the hand, Master Stalker. It is up to them to take it or not.” She patted his head once more and pulled her hand back into her robes. “The attempt alone is noble. If, after an offer in good faith, they still persist in wickedness…well, not even the scriptures call it murder if the killing is done in self-defense.”

The puppet thought about the King of Puppets’ outstretched hand and outstretched scythe, and the way the Fox and the Cat had taken the fruit he gave and taken their hands off their weapons. “Thank you, Cecile. I understand a little better now.”

“Will you pray with me, Master Stalker?” 

“I, that is….” he trailed off. “I don’t know how to. Properly.”

“We can read from a prayer book,” she said quickly. “Nothing improper about that! Plenty of people feel ineloquent before divinity. Please, let me do this one thing for you before you run back into danger.”

The puppet did not know how a prayer was supposed to help, but he didn’t object. It seemed like another very human thing that it would be good for him to know. Cecile pulled a slim book off the shelf and flipped through it, then held it open to a page with tattered corners. She put it in the puppet’s hands and then clasped the holy mark and his hands in her own. He bent his head to look at the words in the booklet and she did the same: their hair brushed. When she started to read off the words on the page he belatedly followed her example, trying to read the words in tandem. It was…strangely gripping. The words the writer had chosen, the way the phrases sounded one after another, the images they tried to convey; it was like music. When it was done the puppet breathed out softly. “That was a prayer?”

“A prayer for protection,” she told him, then closed the book and folded his fingers over it. “For you, kind one. So that you will have a prayer close to hand whenever you need it.”

***

“Is ‘kind one’ a name a person can have?” The puppet asked. “I have been called that before. I liked it.”

“Well, I’m not sure. It's not really the sort of name people are used to, anyway.” Gemini’s lamp brightened and he added excitedly, “Oh, maybe you could have a name that means ‘kind’! Would you like that? Let’s see…Amity is a name, that means ‘friendship’: it’s more of a lady’s name but if you don’t care about that it could be a nice one! Or, I think there’s an Italian name…Benigno! It’s a little too close to Venigni, maybe, but it does mean ‘kind’ or ‘friendly’!”

“Names can have meanings?” The puppet said, fascinated. 

“Sure! Sometimes the meanings are old and when people hear a name they mostly just think of it as a name, but some people have names where the meaning is right out there in the open. Like Clay, or Grace. Are names like that more to your liking?”

“Maybe,” the puppet said thoughtfully. “What was that name you said—Amity? Let’s remember to tell the broken puppet about that. It needs a name too.”

“Oh, golly,” Gemini chirped. “I didn’t even think of that! I’ve gotta be thinking of two times the names….”

Near the elevator was one of the cracked stone bowls full of sky that always seemed to call out to the star fragments in his bag. The puppet held out one above it and paused, thinking. The first time around, after Gemini told him what they were for, he had always made rather generic wishes for ‘aid’. And sure enough, in the first really big fight after each wish, a spectral figure the color of sky had come to the puppet’s aid. He was so much stronger now that it did not seem as urgent to request aid in battle, so he had been wishing for more specific things instead. He had wished that the corpse puppet’s metal parts would be washed out so far to sea that Geppetto would never find them; that the little girl who had cried to him through a window about her missing cat would find it safe and well; that Sophia would not be in pain. He wasn’t sure if any of them had been granted, but it made him feel better just to wish it. At this bowl, as he shattered the fragment in his fist he wished that Cecile would be at peace.

The puppet took the elevator up to the highest spot in the Cathedral, steadying himself as it went. When the doors opened he took a deep breath and started forward. The Stalker in the dog mask looked up as he approached. “Hullo, that’s odd. I thought I was the only one of a sound mind here.” He rolled his shoulders, flicked dust off the badge on his jacket. “I need no introduction, I presume?”

“Parrot,” the puppet said coolly.

“...what?” Parrot laughed, uncomfortably. “I’m sure I don’t…that is, I had a partner named that before. An exceptional fighter, a very brave man, actually: he lost his life saving me. No, I am of course Alidoro, the Hound!”

The puppet crisply saluted with his fire spear. “Do you feel no regret, then, for murdering your partner, Parrot?”

“Murder? My dear fellow, it’s really not…” he trailed off. “Oh, sod it. What’s it to you? Would you like to trade, or not?”

“Not,” the puppet said calmly, and cut him down before he could take another breath. He pulled off the mask quickly with the thought of keeping from being fouled with blood, then began methodically going through the Stalker’s pockets and packs.

“God, that’s the guy who killed Eugénie’s brother? He seemed kind of…pathetic.”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed. The kill hadn’t felt as satisfying this time as it had when done after the betrayal of the hotel: it felt more like…scratching out an item on a list. “If the Hound was as good as Eugénie says, it is surprising. But then when he confessed before he said he shoved Alidoro off a cliff into the swamp monster’s den. They must have thought themselves safe at camp, if the Hound wasn’t even wearing his mask. I suppose that takes a lot less skill than a fair fight.”

“I guess so,” Gemini said grimly. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“He has lots of useful items,” the puppet said, finding yet another amulet in a pocket and putting it in his own pack. He would have to examine them all in detail later. The more cumbersome weapons he left behind, but he kept the umbrella sword and short trident, putting them in the Stalker’s pack along with the other supplies he thought would be useful. “He used to trade them for special Ergo, but I need the Ergo for other uses now. So I suppose this is efficient.” With a heavy heart, he found the cryptic vessel that held the Hound’s message for his sister. He wrapped it carefully in the dog mask and put it in the pack with the other items, then stood with the pack slung over his shoulder. He would set it just outside the door while he dealt with the Archbishop, and then bring it back to Eugénie as soon as possible. 

***

The puppet stood and watched the corpse of the fallen archbishop a while. The last time he fought him the salamander dagger blade had not been imbued with nearly as many moonstones, and it was interesting to see the progress of the fire through the putrid and caustic flesh. Eventually he had enough, and went to get the Hound’s pack from outside the door. A quick side-track to go retrieve the record that Cecile had left him and then he was leaving the Cathedral for the Path of the Pilgrim. He had not gone far down it when he was startled by a glowing form that shimmered into being without an accompanying red glow from his monad lamp. “Gemini? What is it?” he asked quietly. The butterfly was joined by others that made a shifting and translucent ribbon over the path. They looked a little like Sophia’s butterflies, but strangely white instead of blue.

“Your guess is as good as mine, William. It looks like they might be leading us somewhere?”

The puppet hummed in thought even as he tapped the lamp twice to communicate that this name wasn’t a winner either. He adjusted his grip on his spear and did follow. Not far down the path they reached the small garden of dead bodies under stone, and it was there that the path of butterflies led. As he stepped through what had once been a gate he was surprised by a strong pull from his pouch. He pulled from it the large star-piece, the chrysalis, and his gears ground in surprise as it fractured itself into tiny specks of light and made for what he had taken to be a statue of a stargazer. The sparks joined the white butterflies in swirling around the structure, and as he watched in surprise all the plants fell away, the stargazer became pristine white and gold, and a metal ring formed itself out of the air to spin leisurely in place around it. The puppet set the Hound’s pack down and approached the device. “Gemini, I think I should try and activate it, unless you think it’s a bad idea.” 

“What?” The lamp flared, and the cricket’s voice was hesitant. “I mean, you’re the expert here, but…it’s weird, right? Why did it do that?”

“I don’t know. But this did not happen the first time.” The puppet crouched beside the stargazer to look at it up close. So far using star fragments had only ever helped him, and the butterflies reminded him of Sophia so much that it was hard to distrust them either. “I feel like I definitely should inspect it more closely.”

“You’re the boss!” Gemini chirped. 

The puppet reached for the stargazer, and everything went white.

***

Chapter Text

***

“Hey! Wakey-wakey! Come on, pal, get up!”

The puppet grunted, opening his eyes with great effort. He blinked several times before he could really start to understand what he was looking at: a white substance covered everything, ground and trees and sky. He was lying in it, strangely cushioned. “W’happened?”

“I’m not sure what’s going on, but we better check things out.” At the words the puppet got to his feet cautiously, and Gemini continued: “I don’t know where on earth we are—Krat almost never gets this much snow—but it definitely feels like there’s a Stargazer not far away, so let’s get looking.”

Snow? The puppet had heard the phrase ‘white as snow’ before and was startled by the reality of the stuff. When he took a careful step it crunched like the thin shell of a baby puppet, and it was a very odd mix of gritty and slippery. He kicked a little burst of it up to watch how it fell, stomped his boot down to feel how it acted when compressed. He did a few practice side-steps and rolls to feel how it affected his movement, and stuck his right hand down in it to feel the temperature. When he flipped the position of his spear and began carrying it blade-side down the fire dagger started rapidly melting the snow near it, and he let it trail off to his side as he followed his friend’s advice. Not far up the path he came across several dead bodies. They seemed shockingly fresh: the blood in the snow around them was bright red rather than muddy, and when he carefully rolled one over the flesh was bluish but it wasn’t dried or rotted in the way of a body that had been dead for weeks or months. The wounds were torn as by sharp claws rather than the bludgeoning blows he would expect from a puppet, so he took a moment to reach his hand up the small of his back under his shirt so he could swap out the more general-purpose amulet slotted there for the one that helped him against Carcasses.

As expected, the next clearing they came to had more bodies scattered among wagons, and an animal Carcass along with several of the alchemist experiments that puffed out disruption. The puppet wished he had his Puppet String arm, but made do with stepping into the clearing just far enough to throw a cogwheel at the nearest creature and get its attention. He drew it back out of the sight of the other enemies and hit it with a low sweeping strike: instead of the disruption he was braced for, it released a white cloud like steam—but one that burned cold instead of hot. His left leg, the closest to the creature, stiffened alarmingly fast, and the puppet made quick work of finishing it off. “Do blue ampoules clear freezing as well as burning?” he asked Gemini quietly.

“...good question! Maybe not? They’re formulated to deal with hazards that puppet workers encounter a lot, and I can’t think when the average puppet would be somewhere cold enough to bother metal or xylonite.”

The puppet nodded. He would only try it once the condition became untenable, then, rather than possibly waste one. He was able to defeat the rest of the monsters without too much issue, and then he combed through the luggage spilling from the broken carts to look for anything useful. There was one trunk with the emblem of the Workshop Union, and when he broke it open he found some Stalker gear: especially formulated for cold weather, it seemed. The puppet didn’t need to change clothes yet, but if he continued fighting Carcasses long enough he would. He crammed the clothes into a pack along with the boots—they were a little too big, but he could probably stuff the toes and make do in a dire situation. (The first time the puppet’s shoes had been so ruined by acid as to be useless he had simply discarded them without replacements, and quickly learned that his feet were not designed to do without.) There was also a kind of furry hat. He scraped back his hair and pulled the hat down over top, pleased that it held his hair out of his face as well as warming his head past the edge of his mask. The only other objects of potential use were glass bottles. He kept one full of alcohol, which would burn well if hurled into fire, and emptied the others to hold carcass body fluid the next time he had an opportunity to collect some.

The Stargazer Gemini had sensed was nearby, and the puppet was easily able to reassemble it. He activated it and then frowned. “...I can’t sense any of the other Stargazers through it. Can you?” Usually there was a noticeable…echo, from any active Stargazers within the city. The Ergo waves from this one seemed to wash out into the air like sea waves on the beach, with no response. 

“No. And you can bet that worries me. That, along with the sudden snow…were we inactive for a really long time?”

That was not a pleasant thought. The puppet let the energy from the Stargazer recharge his pulse cell and continued on. Near to the Stargazer there was a cliff, and coming up to it he looked down and saw multiple buildings spread out below. “There’s the tram rail,” he noted, “–the white air is hiding most of the buildings beyond these near ones, though. Does anything look familiar to you?” He twisted his hips to give the lamp a clearer view.

“Is that…? Yes, it is, that’s Krat Zoo! How in the blazes—and I mean that literally. The zoo burned down a long time ago!”

“How long is ‘long’?” The puppet asked with a sinking feeling.

“Oh, gosh.…” The cricket puppet made a specific distressed sound that the puppet had come to recognize as dismay at failing in the guide duties monad lamps were designed for. “Um, I do remember it was in the last big outbreak of the Petrification Disease! It took a while for everyone to know it had burned down ‘cause just about everybody was quarantining to try and stop the spread.” 

“More than five years ago?” The puppet asked.

“Oh, for sure!”

“More than ten?”

There was a longer pause. “...no, I don’t think it was that long ago.”

Six to nine years ago, the puppet thought. He sat in the snow and stared at the buildings below. “Gemini, it doesn’t make sense. When Sophia rewinds time I go back to an earlier place I was, the earlier me: Geppetto hadn’t even made me this long ago. It didn’t feel the same either.” Even with that biggest and most harsh resetting of time, he had still felt himself dissolving into blue sparks, and there had not seemed to be any time between it and the re-opening of his eyes.

“We’ll figure it out!” Gemini said bracingly. “You and me can handle anything, Albert.”

The puppet tapped the lamp twice and then ran his hand restlessly along the haft of his spear. “I don’t want to go back even further, Gemini,” he confessed. “It’s been…it’s been really hard. If we went back even longer, I would have to do it all a third time.”

“Let’s not borrow trouble, right buddy?” his friend said. “Let’s go on down there and see what’s up with this zoo. We’ll get to the bottom of this, one step at a time.”

“All right.” The puppet got to his feet and swept his eyes over the path down. A flash of color made him turn his head and he spotted two bright orange animals darting through the snowy trees—foxes! He wished he could have seen them up close. Still, that sight of wild active life made him feel a little more cheerful, and he started the way down with his determination re-ignited.

***

The ape carcasses were a new and unusual challenge, but the puppet had faced worse. Around the broken Stargazer inside was more carnage, all centered around a remarkable fur-covered statue of a tusked creature. As he began repairing the Stargazer, a voice came over the speakers near the roof, saying: “Welcome to Krat Zoo. To think that you would enter this place while I—Markiona, the puppeteer of death—am here. Have you no fear?”

“Gemini?” the puppet asked, not looking up from his work, when nothing else was said over the speakers.

“You got me, Enzo. I’ll admit I don‘t know the name of every master technician, past or present. Not exactly welcoming, is she?”

“I’m afraid the welcome was already spoiled,” the puppet said drily. When the Stargazer was fixed he activated it and felt only the one in the woods echoing back. He looked around the room, especially up at the massive statue in the middle–a ‘mammoth’, its plaque said. “I bet this place was wonderful before the Frenzy. So many animals.”

“Wasn’t even the Frenzy back when the zoo was open, pal,” Gemini said. “That was more recent. And there certainly weren’t carcass monsters roaming the streets. This is getting more instead of less confusing.”

The puppet began a sweep of the grand lobby. There were a lot of plaques to read, but most of them only had facts about animals: interesting, but not helpful at the moment. One plaque near the door made him stand for a moment in deep thought. “This says the Alchemists bought the zoo,” he eventually said aloud. “The Carcasses here—perhaps with the Petrification Disease outbreak they had experiments they were hiding in the zoo break free? Then whether the fire was an accident or on purpose, it would have hidden the Carcasses from the rest of the city.”

“But don’t Alchemists like the Petrification Disease?” Gemini sounded confused. “Why would it upset their plans?”

“They’re happy enough for it to happen to other people,” the puppet said grimly, “–but the Alchemists I have fought have not been mindless monsters or crystal corpses. They use that elixir on themselves but that doesn’t mean it benefits them for them all to catch the disease. And if this was years ago, they might not have…perfected their formula.” He wished for the first time his mouth was more like a human’s: he would have liked to show his disgust by spitting on the ground the way Atkinson had done. “They weren’t even working on a real cure. They don’t want people to get better, they want them to get…evolved.”

“Looks more like a devolution to me,” Gemini chirped. “These poor people. You know, I really hate the Alchemists.”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed firmly. “They all need to die.”

He could only feel that sentiment even more strongly when he ran into even more twisted experiments that he hadn’t seen before: including something that looked like it had once been an elephant, and which did not roar so much as bellow in pain. It was never good to see dead humans, of course, but the puppet had seen so many of them that he was used to it. The dead and mutated animals struck him all the more strongly for their novelty. In the second story of the building he found on a balcony a dying man in gear that could either be that of a Stalker or an Alchemist. The puppet approached with caution. 

“Is that you, Madam Stalker?” the bloodied man said weakly. “You’ve come back?” The puppet shook his head, and the man gave a sigh that ended in a wet cough. “Oh. No, I see…I thought she’d come back for me…to save me. A Stalker with red hair, you see, and a…fine sword…she helped me escape, brought me here. Then went on, trying to…find someone.”

“I have not seen any Stalkers here,” the puppet said.

“There was…a clue. Savannah Experience Center…there. If you see her…that red-haired knight…give her my thanks.” The man coughed weakly and continued so faintly it was hard to hear, “Did her best…to help a greedy fool…shouldn’t think…this is her fault.” With that, a final breath slipped out of him and he slumped back against the railing with the limpness of a corpse.

The puppet saluted him briefly—it was admirable, that the man’s last thought had been concern for someone who helped him—and went through his clothes. There was no useful gear, but there was a poster that made him suck in a startled breath. “What?” Gemini blurted. “What’s it say?”

As steadily as possible, the puppet read out the text on the paper, and then held it down to make sure his friend could get a good look at the image on it. “Romeo—could it really be Carlo’s friend Romeo? The king of puppets?”

“Oh, gosh. That would make us definitely and irrefutably in the past, wouldn’t it?”

“The Stalker Lea,” he read off again. “Do you know her?”

“It doesn’t ring a bell,” Gemini said, though his voice went strangely tinny and distant as he did. “But it feels like it should. Like…” he trailed off, then flared his light and continued with a deliberately more upbeat tone: “Probably this guy’s ‘red-haired Stalker’, though, don’t you think? If she was looking for that Romeo? Still, I guess we have bigger fish to fry. We can keep our eyes open.”

Looking at the portrait was making the puppet anxious, so he folded it and tucked it away. “All right. We still need to make it through this place and figure out what we’re doing here.”

“Well said, Nathan! We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, there’s still plenty of monsters here—no matter what the bigger picture is, it can only be a good thing to take those out.”

“Yes,” the puppet agreed, and turned to go back into the building once more.

***

Chapter Text

***

The puppet cleared the zoo doggedly, methodically. He found assorted useful items: most he made caches of, as was his habit when things seemed useful but not worth weighing himself down entering new territories. The small things like moonstones he could keep, though, and he also found a bow which proved remarkably useful…the problem was that his first instinct was to retrieve arrows after his target was dead, but with the corrosiveness of carcass body fluid he could only use each shaft a couple times before it became useless. The weapon also fired Ergo arrows, but he was not practiced with that; in the meantime he simply conserved his ammo for when he might really need it. Until eventually, he found himself on top of a tower overlooking a great bowl of ice, scattered with debris. “Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Gemini muttered, which was a relief. He had been unnervingly quiet for several hours.

“Some sort of very large creature,” the puppet said. He squinted down at the drag marks. “As big as the Archbishop, probably.”

“Oof. But I’ve got every confidence. You’ve got this, buddy.”

He almost had it. The debris in the area was a huge problem, as was the bony armor of the creature’s skull—which was the greater part of its body. Once more the puppet dearly missed his puppet string. And then there came a point that he was out of pulse cell uses, and he was unable to dodge its blow, and when its massive jaws snapped shut he—

—found himself on top of a tower overlooking a great bowl of ice, scattered with debris. “Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Gemini muttered, which was a relief. He had been unnervingly quiet for several hours. 

“Some sort of very large creature,” the puppet said. Probably no bigger than the Archbishop, based on the drag marks in the snow, but something about the look of the arena set off a sort of warning bell at the back of his mind. It would be hard to dodge something so large, especially with all the debris to work around. He sat on the edge of the platform and used his Enigma tool to remove the fire dagger blade from the spear haft, and instead attached it to the rapier handle in his pack. He left the bow, the reassembled spear, and his pack on the top of the platform, switched out two of his amulets, and with a measured breath descended into the arena. 

The creature was indeed massive, and its bony skull was a problem, but with quick darting strikes (making sure to never get caught on the debris surrounding them, which he felt incredibly aware of) the puppet wore it down until he was eventually able to drive the dagger in his fist elbow-deep into its cloudy eye. It thrashed, knocking him halfway across the bowl of ice, but when he struggled breathless to his feet it was growing still and lifeless. “The size of that thing!” Gemini crowed as the puppet shook caustic eye-jelly off his arm and went over to the corpse. At one point he had seen something wedged between two of its teeth, and he set to prying it out as his friend continued, “Do they usually get that big?! Anyway, that was a huge takedown, buddy. If I may say—you’re pretty good at this.”

The puppet knew he was good at fighting, but it was strangely pleasant to hear Gemini say it anyway. “Thank you,” he said, and pocketed the full moonstone he’d found in the monster’s teeth. He climbed back up to retrieve the things he’d left behind, and then descended a final time and made for the cave where the monster had been waiting behind a sheet of ice. 

Behind the creature’s lair the cave soon narrowed to a short tunnel, at the end of which was a glimpse of daylight through an open metal door, and a puppet of some kind sprawled face-down on the floor. As he approached it it twitched and sparked, and a glitching voice spoke: “H-ha-alt! M-my eternal master M-m-Markiona rules this zoo…y-you cannot e-enter…w-without her permission…m-m-my master will…kill you.” It didn’t sound like a pre-recorded phrase, but based on the letter the puppet had found earlier about this Markiona finding a way around the Grand Covenant, he did not believe this puppet was awakened. He knelt beside it: it twitched even more strongly, but clearly could not move. There were blue lights in the false sleeves that suggested some sort of weapon, and the dimensions of its limbs led the puppet to expect strong kicks rather than strikes from the arms, which were very thin. It was made entirely of enameled metal—very much a fighting puppet. He plucked the ergo from it and went out the door. 

There was a clearing with a Stargazer that needed repair, and dominating the space was a large and lovely building that reminded the puppet of the Grand Exhibition Hall, all metal and glass. Through the gates, decorative iron, greenery inside could be seen like in the room that held the Saintess statue. He pushed them open, and saw another of the strange puppets very slowly approaching: bare metal, this time. The speakers overhead screeched, and the same voice as before said, “This zoo is my domain, and you dare disturb it with your trouble-making, your ructions, your mischief. It’s a wonder you got this far, but abandon all hope of leaving here alive.”

“Whaddya say, Trouble?” Gemini said. “Reckon we should abandon hope?”

“Not even when we’re dead,” the puppet said, and swung at the puppet with his spear, still topped with the tyrant-murdering dagger blade.  It had a style of attack that leaned heavily on its legs, as he had thought, and even as he beat it down (while getting an idea of its moveset) he admired the grace of its movements. He rather wished he was clad in such simple and elegant metal rather than inconvenient false skin. There were both puppets and Alchemists in the building (a ‘greenhouse’, according to Gemini) and the white-enameled puppets did indeed produce some sort of energy projectile from their arms. Eventually, they came across the body of a slain Alchemist, great clean cuts quadrisecting his body. 

“Get a load of this impressive handiwork,” Gemini said, hushed. “I’ve seen something like this before, but…wait. You’ve heard of the Legendary Stalker, right?”

“Of course. You think she did this?”

“It all seems so….” he trailed off, voice going tinny again. “It’s almost like I can recall a day like this in the past. A day when snow fell on the zoo, and the Legendary Stalker was on the hunt….”

The puppet waited for him to finish. When he did not, he lightly tapped the top of the lamp. “Gemini. Your memory is missing, right? A lot of it.”

“Hey!” the cricket said indignantly. “Whose bad memory has been guiding you all around Krat, coming and going!”

“You have helped me a lot. But what do you remember about yourself?”

There was a long and damning pause. “I remembered Sophia, didn’t I?” the lamp said weakly after a while.

“You did,” the puppet agreed gently. “When did you first meet her? She was the one who awakened me: I remember her voice being the first voice I ever heard. What about you?” Gemini didn’t answer at all, but his light throbbed rapidly between yellow and greenish-white. “It's okay if you don’t remember. You would be my best friend even if you remembered nothing at all. I just thought it might be important, since all of this is still so confusing: if you remembered something specific, it might help.”

“I’ll tell you right away if I do,” Gemini said, subdued. “Just…let me think about this.”

“Of course.” His companion had no shoulder to pat: instead the puppet rested the fingertips of his right hand on the lantern and tried to imagine sending a little trickle of Ergo into it. 

They ascended through the building to a chamber near the very top and the puppet paused in the entrance, fascinated. There was most of a puppet suspended from the ceiling: very similar to the enameled ones below, but without the vents on the arms, and with sharp-feathered wings extending from its back. It was headless, with a mass of wires spilling from the chest. There were several other more conventional puppet parts on frames throughout the space, and a dead Alchemist on the floor. “Everything I’m seeing says that this room belongs to a master puppeteer,” Gemini said, voice hushed. 

“Yes,” the puppet agreed. Along with the custom-built puppet, there were blueprints and designs scattered throughout the room, and an array of tools to rival Geppetto’s. “That Markiona, I assume? The ‘ascended’ one the flyer spoke of.” He found the blueprints for the winged puppet and spent a moment studying them carefully. Next he examined the cage in the corner of the room. It didn’t have any of the damage he would expect from a cage that had held a Carcass experiment. There was a red ribbon on the floor that he tucked in his pack carefully. “I wonder if there was a puppet stored here—since she was studying them to try and get around the Covenant.” On a custom display to the side there was what looked like a weapon made of long silver blades designed to look like claws, one set for each hand: he turned them over with interest and experimentally took a swipe at the curtain. Worth keeping, certainly. 

“A puppet? Makes sense,” Gemini agreed. “Or an awakened puppet she was…I dunno, interrogating?”

“Mm. One no bigger than a maid puppet, if that were so.” There was music playing from a small gramophone on the table, and the puppet was naturally drawn to it. He listened to the song for a while as he went through the books stacked nearby, putting a couple that looked useful in his pack. Eventually he decided he liked the music enough to make an effort: he found a particularly large book and ripped off the front and back covers, then sandwiched the record carefully between them and tied the whole thing together with string. When it was stowed in his pack as securely as was possible he picked up a curious little device from the table. “It looks a little like Venigni’s decoder,” he noted.

“Oh, I’ve seen one of those! See the groves on the wax cylinder inside? Like the grooves on your record! It stores sound. They kinda stopped being used before they had a chance to get really popular, because while it’s handy that you can record something on the spot, the wax pretty quickly wears away and starts messing up the sound. That one still looks pretty fresh so it might work: try toggling that control on the side there.”

The puppet did so, and a voice came over the speaker immediately: “This is a message for Markiona, my sadly-not-departed ‘friend’. Important matters brought me to your door: I am searching for my lost apprentice, and it would surprise no one that I assumed you or one of your Alchemist fiends had taken him. I hope you don’t mind: I made a mess of your lackeys as I passed through.” Ah, so this was the Legendary Stalker then. “If you do, consider it partial payment for what happened to my other apprentice. As soon as I am able, I shall return to collect your remaining debt. Do try not to die until then. From: Lea Florence Monad”

Monad? Part of Sophia’s family? And: other apprentice? “The Lea Florence!” Gemini was saying shrilly. “She’s the one they call Legendary Stalker! She went missing in Krat a long time ago…but here she is, alive and well! We are in the past for sure. And, I don’t know about you, but between Lea and Markiona? I know who I’m siding with.”

“I suspect any enemy of an Alchemist is our ally,” the puppet agreed. He put the voice player in his pack and went to go through more books. “You only used two of the three names, she said ‘Monad’ in the recording?”

“Oh, yeah! Lea’s adopted, you know, so she was ‘Lea Florence’ before she joined the Monad family and added their name to hers.”

The puppet definitely wanted to know more about what being ‘adopted’ entailed, but he tried to keep more or less to the point. “You sound like you know her.”

“Who doesn’t? A legend is a  legend for a reason!” With a shower of static he continued more slowly, “The Stalker Lea, coming here on a snowy day to find Romeo…it feels…heavy. Maybe this is why we’re here.”

“...yes, maybe.” The puppet had remembered a memory from the Alchemist Isle, and went so far as opening his mouth to say something, but regained his senses and scolded himself. Gemini had said ’let me think about this’ less than an hour ago: he did not need the puppet piling information and questions on him before he had invited such. Instead he just went to the tools and took some time to upgrade Fulminis with the legion calibers he had on hand, and then to install all the loose quartz from his pouch. Whatever was going on here, Geppetto didn’t seem to have anything to do with it: he would make use of the upgrades without worrying. When he was done, and had taken everything that seemed useful (and would fit in his pack or pockets) he left the room, jumping down on the roof below and finding a broken place in the glass where he could jump down again into the Greenhouse. There was another Stargazer nearby: this one had a single vital part detached instead of being destroyed, like a Stalker had wanted it inactive but easy to be repaired in a hurry. The puppet did repair it, and while his pulse cell was recharging he used the tool Venigni had given him to quickly switch the grindstone in his left arm to one that would do fire damage. 

Entering the new part of the building, the puppet’s gaze was first taken by the large tree inside, the shape of its leaves silhouetted against the glass ceiling. The puppeteer was seated on an ugly chair made of puppets near its base, and as the door swung shut behind him she snapped the fingers of her hand and a thin beam of blue light whipped out towards the puppet. He ruthlessly tamped down fear at the sight of it: fortunately, it showed no signs of being able to control him the way Geppetto had controlled the corpse-puppet. It was hard to see her expression from a distance, but he thought her body betrayed no signs of stress or disappointment as the light beam retracted into her hand once again. “I was told that murderous puppet had come to call on me,” she said, inspecting her fingers and then rising to her feet. The puppet stepped ever closer, and in a moment saw that a cold smile was curling her lip. Her clothes were strange, like someone had tried to make a Stalker uniform after only having heard one described in passing, and though her shoes’ red soles were appealing they overall looked like they would be uncomfortable and hard to fight in. They didn’t seem to affect her balance, though, as she cocked a hip and continued: “So who is this handsome guest standing before me?”

The puppet gave the Stalker salute. “One who hates Alchemists,” he said crisply.

“Oh?” Her smile widened, grew sharper. “It matters not. Hate or love, you won’t have to worry about any of those after today.” She raised the hand with the device like Geppetto’s and its beams shot toward the tree. The puppet saw a completed version of the winged puppet from the workshop, and was glad he had studied its blueprints. He felt very confident to handle it: it was Markiona on whose abilities he had no insight. He did see some sort of holder with blue vials attached to her belt, and resolved to start by breaking them lest they turn out to be a healing elixir of some kind. “You belong to me now,” she said, as her flying puppet took up a station beside her. 

“No,” the puppet said scornfully, and ran the grindstone along his blade until it glowed red. “You do not take proper care of your things.” And then--to start things off on the right foot--he hurled a throwing cell at the beautiful, empty puppet. 

***

Chapter Text

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Markiona died with the Stalker Lea’s name in her mouth, and the puppet’s lip curled just a little as he kicked her over to lie face-up. He searched her clothes efficiently, finding a key and a particularly fine Ergo crystal. “Think that key goes to the gate in the rock outside, Christian?” Gemini asked.

“Probably.” He then ripped the puppet control device out of her hand and tucked it away. The puppet itself was much battered from the fight, so the puppet abandoned the vague thoughts he’d had of caching the shell somewhere in the hopes he could eventually give it to Venigni. The head was cracked: he pulled it apart fully and was at least able to salvage the eyes, which the blueprints had seemed to indicate contained very fine quartz lenses. That done he brushed debris off his pants and left the bodies behind without a second glance. 

The key did indeed fit the gate in the courtyard. Inside was another tunnel of sorts, with man-made little compartments in the wall closed with iron bars. For animals, perhaps? There were red candles all along the path, all burnt out and melted low. As they progressed the melted was seemed to be joined by puddles of blood or wine, and the puppet’s steps slowed as he readied his spear. The tunnel opened all at once to a larger stone sort of cavern, and dominating the center of it was…a statue? A beaming figure with arms outstretched—a very large person, he thought at first, before noticing that beneath the wax the body and limbs were formed from multiple people. Hanging over its head, suspended from a rough metal frame, was a shape like a giant flower; but one formed out of human (or puppet?) arms and wax. The puppet started counting the arms, then gave up. At the feet of the statue was a discarded coat. The puppet picked it up: he liked the cut of it but it was too big for him, and fouled by blood besides. There was a little piece of jewelry in the pocket, one that snapped open to display a picture inside. It seemed to be a picture of several people, but with the tiny size and the bloodstains they were almost impossible to really look at. He lay the coat back down respectfully and stood up to circle around the statue.

The puppet hadn’t realized how silent Gemini had been until his friend finally spoke: “This can’t be. Are those all…” his voice died, then wavered brokenly: “...humans? Just how evil does someone have to be to do something like this?”

The profound heartbreak and disgust in his voice sent a pang of unease through the puppet’s heart. He probably should be that affected too, shouldn’t he? True, it was a dreadful sight…but the puppet had seen dead bodies his whole life, and worse things besides: he couldn’t make himself find this specific arrangement more viscerally horrifying than the first glimpse of Sophia in that awful birdcage had been. With no answer to the dilemma, he settled for practicality. “This certainly doesn’t seem like the work of Alchemists. They are evil enough to do something so horrible, but they wouldn’t have any use for something like this. Someone made them like this as though they were making a kind of art.”

“Art?” Gemini cried, disbelieving. “This?”

“It is hideous,” the puppet agreed, “But I suppose an evil person might find hideous things beautiful.” He thought of Simon, so pleased with his monstrous transformation. “Could these be the bodies of Alchemists? Would that make you feel any better?”

“I don’t care,” Gemini said firmly. “I know we say ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ but I don’t care how awful someone is or how much you hate them, you don’t do something like this.”

“I understand.” Desecration of corpses, the puppet thought, and added this incident to his reference for the term. “Should we take them down?”

Gemini trilled in distress, his light going greenish. “No, let’s just…let’s just not.” 

The puppet nodded, but then sat on a nearby rock. He took from his pocket the slim book Cecile had given him, and paged through until he found a prayer that said specifically it was for the dead. He read it out slowly and carefully, then stood and saluted the statue when he was done. “Let’s go on then.”

The next place was what must have been the ‘carnival garden’ the flyer mentioned. There was a large sort of floating toy that looked somewhat like the Parade Master puppet, which was not an encouraging sight. What was encouraging was the Stargazer near the center of the clearing, but on his way to it he was stopped by the sight of movement off to the side. “Hello,” a rather high-pitched puppet voice said, “Rosaura wants to be your friend. Would you be my friend?”

He saw a quite small, quite custom-looking puppet seated on some boxes. It had a bright red dress and a porcelain face, and its feet were kicking slightly back and forth as it waited for a response. “You want to be my friend?”

“Oh, yes,” the doll-like puppet answered, folding its hands together immediately. “You have a very friendly face! Rosaura wants to be free, you see, but I need my shoes to do that. Would you help me to find them? Please, help me to travel the world, to hold your hand and dance!”

The puppet wasn’t sure why Rosaura sometimes referred to themself in the third person, but then perhaps they had simply chosen a name recently and were proud of it. The puppet thought he might want to tell everyone (except Geppetto) when he chose a name. “I will help you find your shoes. Can I inspect your feet?” They stuck them straight out, and he knelt beside the box, comparing the size of their foot to his hand to judge how big the shoes must be. (They would probably fit in the palm of his hand.) “What do they look like? And how did you lose them? Were they ruined by something?”

“My shoes match my dress so beautifully,” they said brightly, then sank into themself a little. “Rosaura was locked in a bird cage. I don’t know for how long. A white butterfly woke me up and freed me!” The puppet’s head shot up, and they nodded, swaying thenself from side to side. “I followed the white butterfly all the way here! But…I guess I hadn’t fastened my shoes tight enough. They came off while I was running. I don’t know where, but it was somewhere in this carnival.”

“The white butterfly, the one that woke you up.” The puppet leaned in a little, intensely interested in the answer to his question: “Did it speak to you? Did it say it freed you to help someone?”

“Well…no,” they said, sounding a little confused. “It just led me here and disappeared. But…I have a precious friend. I miss that friend dearly. We played all the time at the Rose Estate! Our hearts were filled with joy.” They gestured as they spoke: the movements were pretty, but there must have been some sort of problem in their mechanisms as every few seconds a hitch seized the left side of their body. The puppet wished he had their blueprints. “Rosaura wants to see her friend again. So I have to go back there. I wished and wished so hard, for…it feels like for so long.”

Brushing the snow off his knees, the puppet stood and nodded. “Yes, I will look for your shoes as I go through this carnival. Can I leave my extra things here with you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said eagerly, all her fingers splaying out and then folding together. “I will wait for you, here! If anyone tries to take your things I will tell them they belong to the silver-haired puppet with the friendly face.”

“Thank you.” The puppet tried to smile; he liked the thought of having a friendly face. “I am sure I’ll be back soon, even if I don’t find your shoes right away.”

The carnival was much easier to handle than the zoo. Puppets were a familiar foe compared to the corrupted animals, and some of them weren’t even hostile—the simplest ones that only had one or two functions. Even the parade master puppet, while it looked like the one he had fought before, was noticeably weaker. Had the Frenzied one modified itself some way? He circled back to the entry-way plaza several times to add things to his cache, and Rosaura was bright and cheerful each time. “Do you think she found her friend, Marco?” Gemini said quietly after one of these stops. “I’ve never seen a puppet like her. I hope she’s still around in the later time.”

“I hope so too.”

Eventually they did find her shoes, in the same trip where they found a key for the tram station. When they returned with them Rosaura clapped and kicked her feet against the box she sat on. “You found them! Rosaura is so happy!” He passed them into her eager hands and knelt to watch as her well-detailed fingers slipped them onto her small porcelain feet. There were little buckles under the fabric flowers, and she tightened them as much as they would go before hopping down and doing a few dancing steps, followed by a graceful spin on one foot. “Now I can run. I can dance. I can go anywhere! I can go to the Rose Estate!”

“Will you be safe?” The puppet asked. In just a few hours he had come to like her quite a lot. “You aren’t armed, and you have weak mechanisms and a fragile shell.”

“Rosaura is tougher than she looks,” the small puppet insisted. “Quick and nimble! I can run and hide and climb and dodge!”

“All right,” the puppet said, trying to take her at her word. “We are going to the tram—do you want to come with us? We want to see if we can go to Krat Hotel on the tram.”

“That does sound very exciting,” she said wistfully, tapping the toe of one red shoe against the cobbles. “And I do like you both very much! But I think if I go there I won’t know the way. I think I know the way from here.”

“If you’re sure,” the puppet said, sitting back on his heels and feeling his brow furrow. “Shall I give you a grenade?”

“No, thank you.” She tucked her hands behind her back and rocked from heel to toe, looking up as he rose to his feet. “You gave me back my freedom, so I want to give you something too. A gift! It’s Rosaura’s Treasure.”

The puppet accepted the ‘treasure’ with both hands. It was a record, he was excited to see, and tucked in the sleeve was a piece of paper that seemed to have a very rough sort of drawing on it. The drawing wasn’t much to look at, but the puppet looked at it for a while anyway: the paper was old and worn with much handling. It looked what Antonia would call ‘well-loved’, so maybe the love made it art even though it was so crude. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to take this?” He asked, gently slipping the paper scrap back into the sleeve. “It seems like it matters to you a lot.”

“So do you!” She giggled, and the hitch in her mechanisms made a thick lock of false hair fall over her shoulder. “I’ll remember you for always, wherever I go. The friend who helped free Rosaura! And you are so good at finding treasures…I just feel like you will take care of my treasure very well.”

“I will,” the puppet promised. He should do more to send her off, shouldn’t he? He thought of saluting, or reading one of the prayers, but neither seemed right. Instead he bowed and held out his right hand. “Goodbye, Rosaura.”

She bobbed at the knees, holding out the edges of her skirt, then took the offered hand in her two small ones and shook it carefully. “Goodbye! My new friend. My shoes and I will think of you the whole way!”

“I will think of you, too,” the puppet said, and it was the truth. He wished he could take Rosaura back to Hotel Krat to meet his friends. Venigni would think she was wonderful, he was sure, and perhaps Rebecca would like to have someone to spend time with who was her size. “Please be careful as you travel.”

She traced an x over her chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said seriously: and with that concerning reply, she started skipping off towards one of the carnival tents.

***

Chapter Text

***

The puppet found a fallen sign that he could pile things on and drag them over the ground, and with that he easily moved all his cached finds to the foot of the stairs for the tram. It would take a couple of trips up and down the steps to bring them all up, but that was all right. When he reached the platform he saw someone seated in a wheeled chair at the far end. He approached with caution, but they called out almost immediately: “Who’s there? I can hear you!”

“I’m the Stalker Cricket,” the puppet said when he was a little closer. “What is the matter?”

“Can you help an old blind lady?” She said, stiffly. “The easel before me—it shouldn't be empty, now, should it? Do you see a painting on the ground? It’s mine if so. Pick it up and give it to me, quickly!”

The puppet found the canvas, which looked like it had been taken by the wind from the thing in front of the woman, the ‘easel’. There was no paint on it, though, so he wasn’t sure it was what she wanted. “It’s about as big as the front of a trunk, is that—”

“Yes, give it here!” She insisted immediately. He passed it over, and she tugged off her gloves to run shaking fingertips over it. “Oh, yes, even without eyes I can tell by the feel of the canvas. This is my painting. Thank the heavens!” The puppet was a little skeptical about this, but then perhaps it was meant to be a painting of the snowy sky? There seemed to be some variations in whiteness on it. Perhaps human eyes could see something his own could not. “This is very precious to me,” she was saying, more calm now. “It’s given me courage ever since I lost my sight. I’m sure you would love to hear my story.”

She said the last part very firmly, but then hesitated in a way that showed maybe she wasn’t quite as sure as she wanted to be. “All right,” the puppet agreed. He did like learning about the humans he met. 

“Once I was a high-ranking Alchemist,” she said, proudly. The puppet’s heart cooled and he didn’t much want to hear the rest. Still, he could wait at least a little longer. “I dedicated my life to a dream—the higher purpose that is furthering human evolution. Unfortunately I suffered an accident in the laboratory.” The puppet nodded to himself, more willing to stay now that he knew she had suffered for her work as all Alchemists deserved to do. “The…incident…damaged my eyes. I could no longer do my work. But the injury was a blessing in disguise: stumbling my way through the dark, I found a painting that revealed the Path of Truth through art.”

“Oh?” The puppet sat back on his heels and looked at the canvas again, trying to see something life-changing in its blankness. “This painting?” 

“What do you think?” she asked intently. “What do you see when you look at my painting?”

“I don’t know,” the puppet said honestly. “I think perhaps I don’t know enough about art to understand it.”

“Hmm. True enough, it is a skill not everyone can learn. As for me, this painting inspired me greatly. I lost my sight but I can see the path I must walk. The world is a cold, dark, isolating place. We must find the light—the brilliance that illuminates art! I feel that I am attuned now, and can tread the path.”

All of this sounded much better than the sort of things the puppet was accustomed to hearing Alchemists go on about. He cocked his head to the side and thought deeply. “Music is art as well, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes. Music, poetry, dance, theater—there are many forms of art, I suppose. But for me—this one piece, this singular painting encapsulates them all.”

That sounded very efficient, though the puppet would not want to give up music even if it meant he could understand the painting. “I see. I am going to take the tram—should I bring you along with me? It goes to the hotel, does it not?”

“It should.” She sniffed, her head held high. “My aide has stepped away. True, he has been gone for some little while, but he will return. I suppose I should wait.”

The puppet thought about the body he’d had to push out of the way to get up the stairs. “Is your aide perhaps a tall man with a beard and a red waistcoat, who wields a rapier?”

“I can’t see the color of his clothes, naturally, you dimwit. But yes, otherwise that does describe Robert. Did you see the sluggard on your way to this station? Was he drinking with some of his slovenly friends? I will dock his pay for it, and pay you a particularly fine ergo crystal for the service of dragging him back here.”

“His corpse lies gutted on the stairs,” The puppet said. More coldly he added, “Many disgusting and violent Alchemist experiments have broken loose and killed most of the humans in the zoo. I came to investigate.”

“Well, I’m sure none of my experiments were violent,” she said stiffly. “Ugh, those idiots…they lean so hard on their secrecy there is no redundancy in some of the most important safety and security measures. Especially since that vainglory Manus took control. Our cause is just, if we simply told the people…but no matter. Yes, if my attendant is dead as you say, I will go to the hotel. You must bring my painting and my luggage as well.”

“I have my own things to bring also,” the puppet said drily. “This might take a while.”

“I will pay you for your trouble, I’m sure, Master Stalker. Go on, then.”

Loading her and all the things into the tram took a bit of time, but before too long they were off. The puppet watched carefully through the windows, looking for differences in the city: there were no major ones that he could see from the current vantage point. (there were also sounds from the back of the car like a large rat or other creature had snuck on to the tram. The puppet didn’t say anything: the blind alchemist didn’t seem the sort to be kind to small animals.) When they pulled into the tram station at the highest point of the hotel he wheeled her out and unloaded everything in case the tram was called away to another station. He pushed her chair into the elevator next, and took it down to the lowest floor. When they exited it, the alchemist said, “Well, are there any attendants?”

“No,” the puppet said. “It looks unfinished. There are still cloths over most things and paintings leaning up against the wall in stacks.” He looked further out in the lobby and added, “I see one person, but they look like they might be a Stalker.”

“A fellow squatter, I suppose,” she muttered.

“What’s a squatter?” the puppet asked, since Gemini wouldn’t tell him where a stranger could hear. 

“Someone who stays in an uninhabited place without permission,” she said. “Hmph. Still, I suppose I can repay the owner for anything we use when all is said and done.”

“Lady Antonia says all are welcome,” the puppet said, beginning to push her towards a room on the ground floor. 

“You know Cerasani?” She asked, sounding quite surprised. “A Stalker with connections.”

“She has been good to me,” is all the puppet said. The room he was aiming for was not locked, and he pushed her chair inside and looked around: it was mostly empty of furniture, though there were pieces of a bed near the wall and a large mirror pushed up against the side of it. “Can you stand from your chair?”

“And walk where?” she snapped. “I cannot see.”

“Well, I can’t push you everywhere,” the puppet pointed out, reasonably. “This room looks safe and quiet. There is not much furniture to run into. There are some things against the right wall, and I’ll bring your luggage to put there too. You can put your hand on the left wall and walk yourself to the water closet when you need it.”

“Don’t forget to bring my easel and painting!” She said, then sagged a little in her chair. “Still, you have been uncommonly obliging. You are a well-mannered young man. When you retrieve my luggage, you may open the trunk: there will be that ergo crystal I promised you in a velvet bag atop my clothes.”

Before fetching anything, though, he went to the Stargazer in the lobby—not the giant one he was used to, but a normal portable one—then from there to the table off to the side where he had seen the man in the golden mask. The man looked up from the papers he was writing and leaned back in his chair, draping an arm casually across the back. (apparently casually—it brought his hand within reach of an umbrella that the puppet recognized as the weapon Parrot had called ‘Ettiquette’) “Well, well: a Stalker. Or so I surmise by your attire and…demeanor.” His expression couldn’t be seen with the mask, but he looked up and down the puppet with an exaggerated slowness that the puppet interpreted as mockery of said attire. The puppet did not care: the leather apron had served him well so far, though it was spotted from Carcass body fluid and oil. “And yet your appearance is unknown to me. To me! Ridiculous. A journeyman Sweeper, perhaps?” He waved a lazy hand. “No matter. Many fools claim our two factions are adversaries, but I don’t consider the relationship an inherently hostile one, do you?”

“I prefer to fight enemies other than Stalkers,” was all the puppet said.

“I of course will not assume that is because you suspect you would not win such a fight. I will look forward to working with you, should the opportunity arise. You seemed to arrive accompanied by…some sort of invalid?”

“A blind former Alchemist.” The puppet echoed the look up-and-down. “You are a Bastard, then. You remind me of Parrot.”

“Of…?” He snorted loudly. “What, Crane’s flighty little apprentice? I should take offense…but then I suppose noble blood is noble blood. I, Lumacchio, am leader of the Bastards. You should scold your master for neglecting your education, next time you see them, for you to not know me by sight.  Are you just here to escort this Alchemist, then?”

“I am also following a red-haired Stalker,” the puppet said, and waited to see how the man would answer.

“A red-haired…do you perhaps mean the Legendary Stalker? Lea Florence?” When the puppet nodded, the gold-masked Stalker put the fingertips of one hand against the paper in front of himself and slid it back and forth, a show of absent thought belied by the readiness of his body. “Interesting that her hair is the first thing you think of. What could you possibly want with a…living legend?”

The puppet took notice of the way the man said those last two words, as thought they didn’t taste very good. “There is a wanted poster, requesting help to find Romeo. I had some word that I need to give to her.”

“Romeo,” Lumacchio said to himself. “Romeo…oh, her…apprentice, I suppose. Though she does rather live outside such—” he coughed delicately: “–formalities. Her sidekick, let us say. You say he is missing? That would explain why she has been on edge, of late. She was here, but only in passing. She dropped off a burden and took the lift down, saying nothing more than that she ‘had something to take care of’. One does hear that there is an Alchemist research facility of some sort connected to this soon-to-be-hotel…one even hears that there is a sort of crazed lunatic afflicted by the petrification disease on the loose. The Legendary Stalker might feel obliged to do something about that.” Despite the mask, the puppet could tell from his tone that his lip was curled as he finished: “I have heard it said that only merciful death follows in her wake.”

Merciful death. The puppet liked that phrase. Dealing with Carcasses, death seemed very much like a mercy. “I see. Tell me, what year is it?”

“...are you joking?” The Stalker pulled his chair back up to the table, taking up his pen once more. “Hm. Or perhaps you’ve reached that stage of Petrification Disease where one’s mind becomes somewhat…untethered.”

“I was given a cure,” the puppet said easily. It did not bother him at all to have this man think him stupid.

“Word to the wise: don’t take any supposed cure that an Alchemist does not directly hand you.” The Bastard leader resumed his work, tallying something in long columns. “The Rose Estate,” he said dismissively, clearly having decided the puppet was not worth his time. “Or the Monad Charity House, some call it. That’s where you’ll find your cure. The head Alchemist himself lives there, and I presume he would not have offered his residence for mass quarantine if he did not have a reliable treatment.”

The puppet left without reply. When they were out of immediate earshot, Gemini whispered: “When I think about it, I think after this particular outbreak of the disease it took some time for the Stalkers to be reorganized. Their ranks were thinned by the disease, and I’m pretty sure the leaders of both factions didn’t make it.”

“I will not miss him,” the puppet muttered.

There turned out to be one other person in the hotel: a much bigger and rounder human than the puppet was used to seeing, with a mask that suggested a Stalker. When he asked about it though the man waved his hands. “Oh no, no, not at all! I am a merchant by trade, and I do try and abide by local customs when I come to lovely little cities like this that still stake much on tradition.” He cleared his throat, seeming a little sheepish. “True, the guide book did not specify that in modern times it is primarily these ‘stalkers’ that use them…but no matter! I am glad to have made the attempt and I do rather like this old thing.” He lowered his voice and continued, “Especially with that Lumacchio fellow hanging around…I am man enough to admit that I find him a bit intimidating. We shall draw our courage from whence we can! Now, dear fellow, I don't suppose you're interested in a bit of trade, are you?”

They discussed for a little while: the merchant collected artifacts, rather than Ergo as a Krat merchant would do, and he described the sort of thing he was looking for. The puppet in turn told him about the blind alchemist, suggesting that the man might check in on her at times in return for the puppet promising to share what supplies he brought back. When that was done, the puppet went back to the lift and hit the control to send it back to the top. “What’s our next step, pal?” Gemini asked.

“I will cache the things I will not need quick access too,” the puppet decided. “There is an attic above this short part of the hotel—when I explored everything in the first time, I found it particularly dusty and full of empty boxes. I will put these things in a box farthest from the door so that if we really are back in time, and if we return in a blink instead of day by day, I will be able to retrieve them.”

“You’re still not sure?” Gemini asked hesitantly. “It seemed pretty certain to me….”

The puppet shook his head slowly, frustrated. “It is just so different. I don’t know how I would be here in this body if it were so. I have been wondering if this is instead a sort of memory. Like the ones I viewed on the beach of the Alchemist’s island, but somehow far more detailed and…alive.”

The cricket chirped to himself for a while as the lift reached the top and the puppet started loading it with things. “Well, I get the confusion. But if we are in the past! What an opportunity, right? We’re looking for Romeo—what if we can save him! He seems like a great guy who just wants to help people, and he would be a fantastic ally, right? Plus, with no king of puppets, wouldn’t that mess up Geppetto’s plans?”

“Mm.” The puppet was conflicted. “I think…I think father is not the type to cancel his plans because he could not get the exact materials he wanted.” Or else why the terrible, half-formed corpse puppet? “But you are right: it would be good if we could save him. And we need to fight the Alchemists.”

“Very true! Love your level head as always, buddy.”

“I also have an extra full moonstone now from the crocodile thing,” he added, more cheerfully. “I saw equipment downstairs: I’m excited to see my dagger blade meet its full potential.”

***

Chapter Text

***

The weapon-upgrade device looked newer and cleaner than Eugénie’s, but apparently she had made modifications to hers: this one was working quite slowly. While he let it imbue, the puppet dug around the equipment some more. He found a part that seemed like it was made to attach to a puppet’s Ergo chamber, that he thought could be easily adapted to fit his P-organ. He pocketed it for the moment, thinking of the Bastard leader in the hotel and by no means wanting to risk leaving himself exposed doing such an involved upgrade. There were also enough parts to make a good start on the Legion arm that he’d found plans and a plug for, but eventually he ran out of parts and had to set it aside. There weren’t any training dummies in the courtyard, as those had been set up during the Frenzy. For lack of other options, the puppet went to the side parlor where Lady Antonia spent a lot of her time to see if there was a book that he could read while he waited for his blade. Many of the books were still in stacks, but a few shelves-worth had been carefully set up; while he was looking through those, Gemini spoke up: “Look, Fitz, a book about Krat folk tales! That would be fun, right?”

It did sound a little interesting. The puppet had mostly read books about real things so far, getting information about animals and mechanical diagrams and the like, but— “Folk tales are fake stories, right?”

“Well, yes, but a lot of them have their roots in history!” the cricket said brightly. “That’s part of what makes them so fun. You can see how that past led to our present, you know? Sometimes accurately and sometimes completely made-up.”

The puppet nodded and pulled the book out of the shelf. As he did, a letter fell out of it: the glimpse of writing made him eager, and so he stuck it back in the book and hurried back over to where he could read it while also keeping an eye on his weapon. Unfortunately, as he sat down and took the letter out again his excitement faded. “Oh,” he said in disappointment. “I thought I saw that this was Lady Antonia’s handwriting but I suppose not. It’s too…smooth.”

“Where did you see her handwriting before?”

“She left a letter for me,” the puppet said nostalgically. “After she died.” It was safe in the hotel, back in their hotel, but he suddenly wished it was on his person instead.

“Oh! She’d been suffering from Petrification Disease. That probably made her hands all shaky. Read this one, maybe it is hers!”

“‘To the damned geezer who is head of the workshop’–” the puppet began. “Oh, it is Antonia.” It made him nervous that it was addressed to Geppetto, though. He continued reading, more slowly, until he got to the end and read, “–’please, choose wisely. With your heart. Sincerely yours, Antonia.’ Then there’s another page?” He read that one aloud as well, for Gemini, then was so still it hardly even felt like his heart was beating.

“That damned geezer, indeed!” Gemini hissed. “What a way to reply! I wish she had used a cannonball!” Then his voice got quieter and more concerned as he asked, “Are you okay, pal?”

The puppet’s mechanisms all whined like he was straining to make a killing blow. “I do not know,” he said. His voice was surprisingly calm.

“Do you…wanna talk about it?”

“...I don’t….” Water was welling from his eyes, and the puppet dashed it away with an impatient hand. “He was good at playing piano,” he found himself saying, discovering that this mattered to him only as he said it. “I worked so hard…I thought it was me, but it’s just….” his eyes were making so much water that it started to trickle down the back of his throat as well as his face, and he stopped talking, taking off his mask so that he could properly tuck his face into his sleeve.

“Aww, pal.” Gemini sounded so sad that it made the puppet’s breath hitch. “Don’t think like that! If you had to work for it, then that work is yours, isn’t? So what if Carlo could play piano too? These kinds of skills run in families, you know?”

Scrubbing at his face, angry that the leaking had not stopped, the puppet said, “Families?”

“Well, sure!” he chirped. “Although he apparently did a piss-poor job fulfilling his responsibilities for both of you, Geppetto is basically your father and his both, right? Two boys with the same father are brothers.”

“Geppetto did not make me to be a brother,” the puppet said, fighting to keep his voice down. “He made me to be a, a…a chrysalis that is shredded when the butterfly emerges.”

“Well, he didn’t make you to be my pal either, now did he?” Gemini said firmly. “But you are. ‘Cause we decided that, you and me. That we’re best friends. Poor Carlo isn’t around any more, so you’re the one who has to decide if you’re brothers or not. You don’t have to, mind you! You can just think of him as, as…gosh, I don’t know. A…prototype. Right? Just ‘cause he was first doesn’t mean he’s the best and only.”

“Carlo wasn’t just a prototype,” the puppet said, but his eyes were starting to clear again. The lamp was making sense. “Antonia loved him.”

“And she loves you too,” he insisted. “Right? It’s awful that poor Carlo died, and that letter makes the old man look even worse than he already did, but you matter too. You know that, right?”

“Thanks, Gem,” the puppet said softly. He folded the letter carefully, tucking it in his pack. He used a clean polishing-cloth to wipe his face and then opened the book. “Oh! There’s writing here too.” His eyes darted over the first words and faltered, but he gathered his courage and read: “‘To my dear Carlo, in honor of his tenth birthday. I hope you will enjoy all these stories—don’t just read your favorite and ignore the others! Keep your chin up, little love, and I will see you soon. With fondest wishes, A.C.’” He frowned. “If it was given to Carlo by Antonia, why is it in her things?”

“Well, she had that uniform, right?” Gemini pointed out soberly. “If he died pretty young, before leaving the school, they would probably have sent his things to his closest relative. Huh, I wonder if Antonia is related to the Geppettos at all or just a family friend?”

If being related to Geppetto made someone the puppet’s family, he really hoped Antonia was related. He flipped through the pages of the book, getting an idea of how long it was. It was divided up into about a dozen segments, each of which seemed to be its own story. One of the segments behaved differently when he tried to page through it: the edges of the paper were worn down more than the other parts. “I think he didn’t obey Antonia,” he murmured, “He was mostly just reading this one story—’Pinocchio’.”

“It’s a good one!” Gemini said. “It’s the one about the mischievous wooden puppet who wants to become a real boy. It’s famous in Krat, you know. It’s why puppets are called puppets!”

“Oh?” the puppet said, startled. 

“Yeah! Geppetto wasn’t the only technician back at the beginning of things, of course. The Venignis famously wanted to call us ‘homo machina’, and I think some other guys like Belford were working with ‘automata’. But Master Geppetto was the first one to successfully bring a machine to life, and he called us ‘puppets’ after that story. The people of Krat were appreciative that he used a reference to a local story, I think, and it really took off over anything else. You should read this one, for sure! Or I could read it aloud?”

The thought strangely appealed. The puppet adjusted his position, checking quickly to make sure he would be able to see well before anyone approached him, and set the lamp on the table, propping up the book in front of it. “Yes, please. I want to hear the story.”

****

The story was simple, and a bit silly, but something about it made the puppet’s heart feel like it was trying to escape from his chest. When Gemini was finished reading it, the puppet carefully tore out from the book just the pages holding ‘Pinocchio’ and tucked them in his pouch. By that point his blade was nearly finished, and while he waited he thought long and hard.

Heading to the lift he was taken-aback to find it a much smaller thing than the one he had used to access the Relic of Trismigistus, though it was in the same place. It went down much further, too, and when the doors opened it was to a man-made facility with brick and metal walls. There were carcass monsters inside, and strange Alchemists with spears that glowed with inner fire like the puppet’s salamander blade. There was also a white mist that sent frost up his arm as soon as he got close to it, so he resolved to deal with that last. The more of the facility he explored, the more angry the puppet became. Many of the carcass experiments had died in constraining clothes that tied their arms to their bodies, or in cells and cages layered with both colors of blood in a damning proof of extended suffering. The puppet took up every piece of paper that looked useful, and burned all those that did not: one particular document was so fascinating that it stopped him in his tracks. It was labeled ‘interrogation log’, and the puppet wished it named the ‘accused’ so that he knew properly who they were. He read the whole thing aloud to Gemini, who whistled slowly when it was done.

“This guy was telling them the truth, though I doubt they were happy to hear it. And that stuff about Markiona ‘putting the heart of the person who raised her in a puppet’—you don’t think it means the actual…?”

“That person must have died of Petrification Disease and she took out their crystallized Ergo. We read before on the Markiona flyer—this ‘secret of immortality’: it must have been this Ergo that she put in that maid puppet.”

“God,” Gemini said, sounding very disturbed. “The thought of that…I mean, it’s weird enough the whole business about Ergo being full of memories, but, you know…somehow it seems less wrong to make a puppet with an Ergo that’s got a lot of little bits of a lot of people than it would be to just put a whole person in one. That’s just….”

“‘The devil’s method’,” the puppet said grimly. “If she was the first, then Geppetto found out somehow and started scheming for how he could bring Carlo back the same way.”

“So…” the cricket said hesitantly. “...you think Carlo died of Petrification Disease? And Geppetto just…his own son…ugh, I’m gonna be sick.”

“That would make sense,” the puppet said, stamping his foot lightly in frustration, “But then what of the corpse-puppet? It wasn’t just some…random piece of Ergo, no more alive than those puppets taking carnival coins to play games. It was Carlo, at least in part. A hateful, violent part.”

“Did the Ergo break in two?” Gemini said hesitantly. “You said the whole point of Geppetto making you was to have you sort of…incubate Carlo’s heart, feed it Ergo from the enemies you defeat. Was he hoping that would make it possible to…re-fuse them, somehow?”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” The puppet muttered, trying to make himself believe that it didn’t actually matter an awful lot. “I destroyed the corpse puppet and crushed its heart and Ergo. It’s gone.”

“I feel bad for poor Carlo, but since that thing is what was gonna kill my best pal I can’t really be sad it’s gone,” Gemini said firmly. “Let’s keep going: I’m sure we’ll keep finding more information. You’re making a lot of progress, Timothy. Like that interrogation log said: as moral beings we gotta give these poor folks peace.”

The lab was a dangerous place, but not really worse than the zoo or the alchemists’ tower. The only near-deadly time came when the puppet dropped down to a cell through a hole in the floor above and saw a massive monster in the center of the block of cells. He actually took a moment, crouching in the shadows behind a cot, to swap a few of his defensive parts in hopes of withstanding the monster’s heavy weapon. Even with his preparations the fight was brutal, with the creature able to move surprisingly fast in between swings of its huge ball and chain. When he finally felled it the puppet just stood over it for a long moment and panted, his bellows straining to cool his overworked mechanisms. His face ached from a blow to the head he had taken part-way through the fight, but his pulse cell was discharged so there wasn’t much to do about it. He felt…sorry for the creature. Most of the carcass monsters that were dangerous had some sort of ‘natural’ defense—acid spheres, long bone spikes. This creature’s hands were forcibly bound inside the weapon device. Although it had hurt him, the puppet found that he was able to have sympathy for it nonetheless, a fellow creature made to destroy. “Looks like a Workshop emblem on that little box by the door,” Gemini contributed. 

“Ah ssah i’...” the puppet stopped cold, frightened. “Ah cah’ ‘ahk!”

“You can’t talk?” Gemini sounded as alarmed as the puppet felt. “Here, hold me up and I’ll look in your mouth, okay buddy? Maybe you got something stuck in there and you just can’t feel it?”

He vaguely remembered feeling like something had gotten in his mouth at one point in the fight and opening his jaws enough to make sure it fell out on the floor. He detached the monad lamp and held it up in front of his wide-open mouth. Without his meaning it, a small and animal-like sound squeaked out of his throat.

“Stars and Saints,” Gemini said, a little muffled from his position. “Looks like you bit half your tongue clean off there, pal. Doesn’t it hurt?”

Was that why his face hurt? His tongue? The puppet whimpered.

“Hold on, now, let’s not panic,” Gemini soothed. “The stuff your tongue is made out of, it’s like your skin, right?” The puppet shrugged helplessly. He had never examined his tongue before. “Well it looks like it probably is. And if I look real close—” the lamp’s light flared a little brighter: “–yup, on the inside of your mouth there’s some etchings like Eugénie was talking about with your shell. I bet if you give it enough time it will, uh, heal itself? Fix itself. Like your skin does.” The puppet held the lamp far enough out so Gemini could see his expression at that, and the cricket made sympathetic noises. “I know, buddy, I know. Not fun at all. But it’s good it can do that, right? If you had a voice box like a more normal puppet did you’d have to take it out and replace bits if it broke! You really are something else, pal. I’d say Geppetto made you with alchemy as much as he did with technology.”

That was not a thought the puppet liked in the slightest. Crushing down panic, reminding himself that he had a job to do, he hooked the lamp back on his belt and went to investigate the box Gemini had seen.

***

Chapter Text

***

The puppet discarded his leather apron—he was sorry to see it go, as it had served him well, but it had already been ravaged by carcass body fluid before the Sweeper’s booster hammer had lit him on fire. His burnt furry hat he tossed aside also as he cautiously approached the woman who was now kneeling, panting, with a single hand on her hammer’s haft keeping her from collapse. “Véronique will never give in….” she was saying to herself, like she had been doing during the fight. When the puppet came within reach her head came up a little and then bowed again. “Forgive me. I did…terrible things to you.”

“I forgive you,” the puppet said, or tried to say: the words were still somewhat mangled even after he had used a full set of pulse cell charges on himself after recharging it at the last Stargazer. “You said Alchemists drugged you? I met one of your men. He was drugged too.”

Véronique at least seemed to understand him. “One of my—” she shuddered and her other hand tightened on the hammer: the puppet took a step back. Her hand soon shook though, and she returned it to clutch at one of the wounds he had given her. “Is he..?”

“It was really sad,” the puppet said, “But there was nothing we could have done for him.”

“That drug,” she said with weary rage. “Their cure…it twisted my mind. I put you in danger…I’m sorry.” She tried to shift a little more upright, letting both hands fall palm-up in her lap. “Please,” she said intensely. “I beg of you. Nothing must leave this place. This cursed lab…those cursed beings….” Her fingers started scrabbling at the back of her mask as she apparently tried to get it off. The puppet stepped slowly behind her, making sure she could see his movements, and helped her to undo the little buckles there. She dragged off the horned mask and looked up at him with dark human eyes. “The things we saw in here…God. Inhuman. Inhumane. There is a…test subject. Their so-called ‘two-faced overseer’. Created from something in the ruins. An abomination that cannot be allowed to live.” She reeled, and he saw her eyes start to roll back into her head before she regained the iron grip on her will. “Please. One last favor.”

“I plan to leave no creature living in this facility,” the puppet swore easily and honestly. “No non-living either. I am following the Legendary Stalker, but this is a task I won’t leave half-finished.”

“...good,” she breathed, and most of her remaining strength seemed to escape her body with it. Much more weakly she continued: “‘Legendary’—the red-haired Stalker? Insectoid mask, like yours? …she did pass through here.” She coughed, and thick purplish blood trailed down her face. She spat a mouthful of it on the floor. “I could still think straight, then. She showed true…compassion…despite old rivalries. Lea would…head to the coast. You can follow. I die…as I lived…without regret.” She looked at him with eyes hazed by blood and sighed out, “...remember me. Véronique…of…Krat.”

The puppet saluted her. Her eyes slid closed and her body started to fall: he caught her without thinking, and his hand came up against her back as he instinctively reached for her Ergo. It did not come out thick and pure as Sophia’s had, but something curled around his hand and slipped beneath his shell. “What did you just do?” Gemini blurted. 

“I don’t know,” the puppet said, half-lying. “I wish we could have saved her.”

“She fought until the bitter end. Even if we’d had a way to help her, it…was far too late.” Gemini’s voice was terribly sad. The puppet nodded to himself. Yes, it was sad. She had been brave and good and he shouldn’t have had to fight her. “At least her suffering is over. I hope she can be at peace and rest now.”

“Yes,” the puppet said with regret. He respectfully laid her body out on its back and started to go through her things: there was a key, some paper, a few small things he didn’t know the purpose of that he pocketed just in case they were important. With his apron destroyed the puppet wanted to see if he could wear some of her protective gear. Gemini chirped, distressed, as the puppet started to take off the armor, but the cricket did not object. The metal pieces, the breastplate and shoulder armor, were too heavy to be comfortable. The leader of the Sweepers had a body that was both taller and wider than the puppet’s by a considerable margin. There was a sort of leather vest under the breastplate, though, with straps that could be tightened until it nearly fit him. Over her trousers were a kind of leather over-trouser that the puppet thought looked very useful: he had to cut them shorter at the hems, and they were loose around his legs where they had fit Véronique’s snugly, but he thought they would help against what was sure to be more carcass monsters up ahead. There was a coil of thin rope on the Stalker’s belt, and he started binding the over-trousers to his legs so they wouldn’t flap about. “This ‘two-faced overseer’...does it sound familiar?”

“No,” Gemini said. “Not from either recent or ancient Krat history. You think the alchemists really found something in the ruins that could….”

“It would suit them,” he said darkly, and mimed the action of spitting with his dry mouth and damaged tongue. “I hate Alchemists.” He went to the console that seemed to control the machinery in the room: Véronique’s key fit in it and let him start flipping switches.

“Well, if we’re really gonna destroy everything that moves in this facility you’re gonna do them a lot of damage,” his friend said, a little more cheerfully. “Say, that…we’ve been wondering why there are all these advanced experiments when this is years ago and nobody knew about Carcasses until recently: I bet we’re why! I bet we do so much damage to these monsters that it takes them almost ten years to really get going again.”

The puppet felt warmth. “That would be good,” he said thoughtfully. “To have made a difference like that.”

With the coolant gone new pathways opened up in the facilities. One of them led back to the entrance, and the puppet moved a couple of his caches into the room he now had a key for, which held more belongings of the Black Rabbit Brotherhood. Then he started exploring the new territory. The first big room he came to was behind a closed but unlocked metal door, and inside—his monad lamp flickered in surprise, which the puppet felt himself. The room itself was not too special, though he was interested in how there were plants growing even out of reach of the sun, but in the center of the room was a case containing a small golden coin fruit tree…and beside the case, face pointed towards the puppet– “Strange,” the Hound said calmly. “Though I suppose I should expect to meet strange people in a place such as this. I smell blood on you but—interesting: it’s the blood of Alchemists.” He crossed his arms, and the puppet saw the Two Dragons sword and a bow at his side, and five fingers on each of his hands. “Still. It doesn’t mean we aren’t enemies.”

The puppet saluted, distantly thinking that it would be rather useful to have a sense of smell. “I am a Stalker. I was investigating the situation at the zoo, and found evidence of the Legendary Stalker as well as her apprentice. Since the situation was dire I am trying to catch up to her to join forces. Are you also investigating Alchemists?”

“Tell me this,” the Hound said, not answering the puppet’s question: “What evidence is it that you claimed to have found of Lea and Romeo?”

The puppet dug the pendant out of his pocket and handed both it and the wanted poster over. “There were also signs of fighting,” the puppet said as the Hound looked over what he had been given. “A broken scythe in a room full of destruction: a blood stained coat: a voice recording on a wax cylinder.” He smiled just a little. “And a good number of Alchemists who were dead before I even got there.”

The Hound was silent, looking at the puppet now instead of the evidence. He snapped the pendant closed and handed it back. “Hmm. This is indeed a photo of Lea and her two apprentices. This locket does seem to be hers.”

“Two?” The puppet said, with interest. There had been hints to such a thing, but the confirmation made his springs feel strangely stiff all of a sudden, and he wished the picture were not so warped by blood. “Is she not alone in her hunt, then?”

The dog mask tilted to the side. “Hmm. I thought it was rather common knowledge, but then I suppose Lea has avoided the rank-and-file Stalkers ever since striking her own path. Lea took on Romeo and another boy, Carlo, as apprentices at the same time. But Carlo perished a year or so ago, in a tragic…accident.”

It was hard to breathe, suddenly, and the puppet felt like he had stepped into electrified water, even as in the back of his mind something noticed the way the Hound had said that word, ‘accident’. “I see,” he said, finding that his voice was even and unaffected. Truly, his father had created a fine liar. “So she is alone then. Do you…object to me following her?”

“I am no master of yours, to critique your path,” the Hound said calmly. The puppet was searching for signs of Eugénie and not finding them–voice, posture, way of speaking: he wished suddenly the Hound might take off his mask in case there was a resemblance in his face. “I will take you at your word that you wish to help Lea. I’ll trust you…for the moment. People call me the Tracker. I share little of myself with strangers, but I will give you my word that I am not Lea’s enemy, nor yours. I consider any enemy of the Alchemists an ally. Feel free to stay in this room and rest a while. I have found it a safe checkpoint in this warren of wickedness. There is water, even, piped in for their plants: I see you have lost your canteen, so please partake generously.”

“Plants,” the puppet said, and turned to face the glass case beside them. 

“Yes,” the Tracker said. “Including this tree…what could it possibly be? It looks almost human-like. It clearly bears some significance, but I hardly dare to think what it might be.”

“Most of the Alchemists experiments with corpses make the Carcass monsters,” the puppet agreed, not sure how much he could tell the Hound without raising suspicion. “This tree feels….”

“Almost benevolent,” the Tracker finished softly. “Mm. Quite curious, indeed.”

After a moment of silence, the puppet tried his earlier question again in slightly different clothes: “You said you have been through this facility? Is there something in particular you came here for?”

“I am tracking a dangerous relic the Alchemists freed from the ruins. A calamity that will wreak torment upon Krat if it is allowed to. Even then, the immense power of that relic wasn’t enough to satisfy the Alchemists. So too did they retrieve the remains of the ancient warrior that was protecting it…and conducted vile experiments on what they found. Those experiments have yielded results even more monstrous than the—what did you call them?—Carcasses. A test subject has transformed into what one could call a living weapon. One that must be stopped before it can be unleashed upon the city.”

“Is that the ‘two-faced overseer’?” The puppet asked. He did not like to think about the term ‘living weapon’. “I swore to Véronique I would kill it.”

“The leader of the Sweepers?” The Tracker said, hand falling to the hilt of his saber. “...mm. From your tone I take it she lost her life in these halls.” He waited until the puppet nodded, then bowed his head. “Véronique was a woman of great honor and courage.”

“I was sad when she died,” the puppet said. The Tracker’s head tilted to the side again, then he nodded slowly. 

“Your grief honors her sacrifice.” He went to a pack that was sitting atop a desk, and withdrew from it a brass horn with a scrap of red cloth around its neck. He held it out to the puppet, who took it and observed something that looked almost like sunlight slowly chase itself around the polished metal surface. “Take this horn. If you plan to explore this facility, you may find the Overseer before I do. If you play this, I will hear it, no matter where I may be, and I will come to your aid.”

“I will,” the puppet said, and tilted his head in mirror of the dog mask. “You are brave to come here alone and try to fight such a monster. Is it just because you are a Stalker?”

“I have my reasons,” The Hound said softly. “The Alchemists must be opposed: any moral being would see this. But as for working alone…mm. There are certain…expectations, between members of a team. I must hide my identity to protect the person most dear to me: few would be open to doing this kind of work with a man who will not even share his name. I cannot let down my guard until I finish investigating the Alchemists.” He adjusted the golden winged pin on his overcoat, pushing it up with his thumb and shifting just a little on his feet, and the puppet’s heart pounded at seeing for the first time something that reminded him of Eugénie.”This is why I ask your assistance,” the Tracker finished.

“I fight to protect things dear to me too,” the puppet said. “It is wise to be cautious.” How then, he had to wonder, had Parrot managed to pull off his betrayal? What had he done to earn this person’s trust to any sort of degree? “You can call me Cricket, Tracker, and I will not ask you to take off your mask. You are allies with the Legendary Stalker, though?”

“Legendary,” The Tracker said quietly, a hand coming up as though he would have cupped his chin if his mask was off. “Lea probably hates that title, you know. She would say that she simply stepped up because no one else could. Someone had to stop that evil, murderous puppet, and too many Stalkers had already fallen.”

“Arlecchino?” The puppet asked with intense interest.

The Tracker nodded slowly. “Mm. I see it is still the most widely-known ‘secret’ in the Stalkers, despite the best efforts of Krat’s high and mighty. Such…notoriety as comes with an epithet like that holds its own risks. I fear, as I suspect Lea does, that one such risk now endangers Romeo. She is desperate for any news of him…hence my willingness to send you on in your goal to follow her. I haven’t seen her like this since she lost her last apprentice.”

“Carlo,” The puppet said, and his heart seized. Almost angry at it, he continued: “The way you said ‘accident’, before….”

“The Alchemists were involved,” he said with reserve. “Any more than that…one dares not speculate without evidence.”

“Why did Romeo go off by himself? Wouldn’t he know that Lea would worry?”

“Trouble erupted at the zoo, and he went thinking he could deal with it. He and Lea have…their own brand of justice. I would not go so far as to call them vigilantes, but they do their best. Romeo has dealt with many dangerous situations prior to this: he can handle himself. I would not have thought anything would have troubled him on his mission, and yet he went missing.” The Tracker crossed his arms and sighed. “Romeo is well-liked wherever he goes. It’s possible that this is some old grudge coming to stab Lea in the back—and what better way than through her treasured apprentice? I would like to hope that he is well, but that seems unlikely.”

The puppet nodded, letting all this sink into his brain. “Mm. I can rest here, you said?” The Hound nodded, and gestured at the wide space with an elegant sweep of his arm. The puppet went to the side of the room where plants were growing, and say among them with his back to the gold coin tree and Alidoro. “The Tracker must have very good ears, to hear this horn anywhere in the building,” he muttered quietly. Gemini’s light flared to show that he had understood the warning. The puppet took out the letter he had taken from Véronique’s body and read it, slowly. It brought back the ache of seeing her proud form fall still all over again. He had killed Stalkers before: why was her death the one that weighed on him? The puppet shook himself and took out the folk tale he had torn from Carlo’s book. He would read it again—the puppet was learning to read quite quickly—and then he would set back out into the facility once again.

***

Chapter Text

***

“Rest in peace, wretched warrior,” The Tracker said. He sounded a little winded, but mostly just…

“You sound sad,” the puppet said.

The Tracker’s head tilted. “...hmm. This creature was once a guardian, loyal even to death. His rest was disturbed and his body desecrated by the Alchemists: you would not call that saddening?”

The puppet jerked an intact arrow out of the corpse. “The Alchemists make me angry.”

“Ah.” The Tracker nodded slowly, and sat on his heels. “I would not call that unjust. Yet I have learned that one can only be angry for so long before it transmutes into something else. Given that, I would rather feel sadness than apathy.”

Finishing his search of the corpse—there was a moonstone set into the collar that he was able to salvage–-the puppet thought for a moment and then nodded. “I see. Yes, I am angry, but I also see that it is sad.”

“I am pleased that you understand.” He stood and stretched his arms out. He was favoring one leg a little, the puppet realized. “A hard-fought victory over a dangerous opponent. But we have granted its soul eternal rest. May this creature, which woke to misery, find peace.”

“You have a very fine sword,” the puppet said. By the time he had received the Two Dragons Sword in the first time, he had already been pleased with his arsenal: he had given the saber instead to Eugénie on seeing how it interested her. Watching it be used by Alidoro, he rather wished to try it again.

“It was wielded by a hero of the seas,” the Tracker said with a kind of quiet pride. “Or so the tales say. A blade that had protected countless people. It is said the hero smiles upon those who use it for righteous causes.” He saluted the puppet with it, then wiped the blade before sliding it into its sheath. “You yourself showed great skill during this fight. Your fighting style reminds me…you must have had a great teacher.”

“My father is the one who made me what I am,” the puppet said. He wondered if it was Carlo who the Tracker was remembering.

“He should be proud of his son,” The Tracker said, easily, like it was a thing self-evident. The puppet’s springs reacted. “Well, my mission here is complete. I will make my way to Hotel Krat from here. If you look for more clues about Alchemists, you can meet me there and we shall share any information we each acquire.”

“I think I will sweep the facility first,” the puppet said thoughtfully. “Make sure it truly is cleared out. Then, yes, I will return to the Hotel.” He hesitated. “Would you…I have a favor to ask in turn.”

“Oh?”

“The tree, in the lab.” He twitched in remembering it, and the Tracker nodded. “It is something called a gold coin fruit tree.” If the Tracker was familiar with that name, his body did not reveal it. “The Alchemists created it by tormenting a woman with power, a Listener. Could we…I want to destroy this place and all in it, but she did no wrong. If she could be taken from the lab and…perhaps hidden somewhere safe?”

Alidoro nodded slowly. “Mm. There is no lie in your words. Yes, I agree that this woman should be evacuated, no matter what form she is in. I give you my word: I will pass through that lab on my way and take care of it.”

“Thank you,” the puppet said. It felt like a weight lifted off his shoulders: he’d never had someone who could help with a thing like this before. “You don’t even have to tell me where she goes as long as she is safe. I suspect I will be down here for a half-day or so more, just to be sure.”

The Tracker extended his sword hand, and the puppet clasped it—sure to be careful and only clasp it as hard as the human was clasping his. “I will see you then, Cricket. Good hunting.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

It took him several hours to thoroughly clear the facility, making sure all the Carcasses were destroyed and any important-looking research or equipment also. The puppet still was half-sure that this was just a sort of very long, very detailed memory recording but if Gemini was right about them setting the Alchemists’ progress back he wanted to do a thorough job of it. His lamp was fairly quiet, disheartened as he had been by most of the things they had seen, but at one point he hesitantly offered, “We can probably…do you think we can save the Tracker? We have to, right? He’s a hero! He’s Eugénie’s hero, and that’s even before him being her brother. Surely there’s some way we can warn him?”

“The Hound had to have trusted Parrot a lot, to be his partner,” he answered slowly. He backed away from the table and started flicking cogwheels into all the glass canisters on it, watching each one break and sizzle as whatever was inside was freed. “He doesn’t really know us: why would he trust our judgement over his own? And what warning could we even give, without trying to explain the whole business of rewinding time?”

“Good questions, Sebastian,” Gemini sighed. “I guess you’re right. You’ll warn him if you find a way, though, right?”

“I promise.”

The body fluid from all the enemies and experiments had quite ruined his clothing, but he was lucky to find a sort of shared bathing room in the facility: even better, along with the regular basins and tubs there were several fixtures that poured water from above and then drained it through a grate on the floor. This was much more preferable, as none of his body was ever fully submerged in water and it was easy to efficiently wash himself and his clothes at the same time. He was nursing a faint hope that Antonia might appear at some point and he wanted to keep himself clean as best he could, the way she approved of. When he was finally finished he returned to the elevator, shuttling in the various supplies he had cached as he went through the place. Upstairs he took a quick lay of the land—the Tracker was standing by the desk where Polendina usually stood, working on something, and Klaus seemed to be in the same place he had been previously. The Bastard, however, was missing. The puppet took one of the things he had found in the facility to the door of the room where he had put the blind Alchemist, and knocked on the door. “Yes, what is it?” Her sharp voice responded immediately.

He entered and found her sitting in her wheeled chair, still in front of the white canvas on the easel. “I found some things that I thought might be yours—paints and brushes and things.”

“Oh?” she said eagerly. “Bring them here at once!” He passed the supplies to her and watched her trembling fingers sort through them until she finally sighed, shaky. “It is my paints. Oh, thank God….”

“I did not find any canvases.”

“No matter,” she said. “The Path of Truth is not a thing one treads once and is done. I have been thinking about ways I might yet improve the vision….”

“A very Alchemist thought,” the puppet said neutrally. “Well, I am leaving again.” He went to the place where he had stashed the backpack from the forest, and pulled out the fur-trimmed Stalker gear from within it. Some of the acid had damaged his false skin, and it seemed like a bad idea to have his identity as a puppet so visible. He also took the most useful-looking weapon he had found below, the blunt one with the inset explosive mechanisms, and set it up in the upgrade device to begin to infuse over a dozen moonstones. Once he was dressed, he returned to the lobby to greet the Tracker. 

“I am glad you made it out okay. I was able to remove the tree from the facility,” Eugénie’s brother said calmly. “It will take some time to get it to a final place of safety, but for now, it is safe.”

“Good. I’m glad.” The puppet pulled out the strange device he had found in the facility and held it up. “Do you know what this is? It resembles a cryptic vessel, at least a little.”

“A cypher machine,” the Tracker identified, taking it. “Alchemists use them to store information; decrypting one requires a special key. Fortunately I…’found’ several during my travels. Let me see if one fits this particular machine.” The puppet watched with interest as Alidoro brought out the ‘keys’ and tried them until he found one that fit. When he was done, he skimmed over the information produced by the machine. “Here, please feel free to look as well. Any enemy of the Alchemists is a friend of mine; we should share information.”

“It looks like the mounted crocodile at the zoo,” he observed.

“Mm. There are legends about the zoo, in fact, claims of a haunting by a ‘ghost crocodile’–will you investigate?”

“I don’t know that I will have the opportunity to go back there,” the puppet said, not without reluctance. Solving these kinds of mysteries was a lot more interesting than simple fighting, and less likely to leave pieces of him damaged. “I must continue to follow Lea.”

“Admirable,” the Tracker said. “Perhaps I will take the tram there myself. You plan to return to the underground facility? It seems to connect to the mines, which is the logical next step in Lea’s journey, particularly if the coast is her ultimate goal.”

“Yes. If I return, will I see you again?”

“I expect I will be here off an on for several days,” he said, and nodded towards the desk which was stacked with towering piles of documents and other things no doubt stolen from the Zelator facility. “There is a lot to go through.”

The puppet saluted him. “Keep well, Tracker. I will bring any cypher machines or keys I find if I return here.”

***

In the mines, near the entrance to the Alchemist facility, the puppet met Lumacchio. He had some useful information for the puppet, although there was a certain…leading quality to it that was suspicious. He very much seemed to want the puppet to look for the creature or artifact below, and his regret for Véronique lacked the warmth his words tried to suggest. For that reason, the puppet gave as little information as he could in return, and left with relief that the encounter was over. “Did you know about the tram to the Rose Estate?” He murmured to Gemini as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Um…I think so? It definitely sounded familiar!” The light faded. “But that's not the same as knowing anything useful, huh, pal? I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault if you don’t know,” the puppet said firmly. “You know so many more things than me as it is, I don’t expect you to know everything.”

“Good, ‘cause I don’t,” he said wryly. “But!! It’s good news, right? To know there’s another way out?”

“It's always good to have other ways out,” the puppet agreed.

Fighting mining puppets was almost a relief, since he knew what to expect. There were a few models he hadn’t fought before, but none that were impossible to face. Eventually, he came upon something much more interesting than a mining puppet. Seated on a crate, scratching weakly at the cave wall, was– “Rosaura!” the puppet called. She did not look well, but it was a relief to see her intact. Clearly she hadn’t lied about her ability to slip past enemies unnoticed. “Are you all right?”

“Rosaura needs…ergo….” she said, her voice staticky. 

“I have some, I have—here,” he said. He had found a rather large chunk not long ago and hadn’t broken it yet with the thought that he might need it for trade later: now he held it out to the small puppet who took it weakly in her hands. She seemed to be trying to crush it, but her little fingers were not nearly strong enough. Should he have given her a smaller piece? “Here, let me help.” He closed his hands around hers, and squeezed them down on the chunk of Ergo until it sparked and started to break. She breathed in deeply and flecks of blue light started flowing into her body. He watched in intense interest as she absorbed the Ergo. 

“Oh!” she said, voice already becoming clearer. “I am so happy to see you again, friend! I was trying to go to the Rose Estate…the white butterfly was even helping me. But maybe it is too far. Rosaura felt like her heart was…slowing.” She wriggled and jumped down to her feet, shaking herself head to toe. “But now I can move! I could dance! You are such a kind friend. Let me give you another treasure! Things I have found on my travels.”

The puppet accepted the papers she gave him, but his interest was still on what had just happened. “Rosaura, are you…most puppets can’t just absorb Ergo in that way: did Geppetto make you?”

She laughed, clasping her hands together. “Oh, yes! How did you know? She made me special for my dear friend.”

“I know because I can do the same,” he said, and crushed a smaller fragment from his pocket in demonstration. She clapped, then swept her arms outwards and up and bent them in an arc with her fingertips touching her head.

“Oh! I knew I could trust you. That must be why I felt like I knew you straight away, if Mistress Camille made you too.”

The puppet wasn’t sure how he felt about Camille: resentful, in part, that she had worked with the Alchemists and died for it and made his father go mad. But it was still probably better to have her as a maker than the head of the Workshop Union. “Hm. Rosaura, you lost power just going from the carnival to here?”

“Rosaura is made small,” she said brightly. “Big enough to dance and play and sing! But not to hold a big Ergo. But I can break one, like that, and feel better right away!” Her hands went behind her back and she shifted a little on her toes. “Rosaura used to not get slow so soon. But now….”

“That is worrying,” the puppet said. “May I look at your mechanisms, Rosaura? I fix my own all the time, maybe I can help if there is something wrong with yours.”

“All right,” she agreed immediately. He had to help her with her clothes, since the dress had a lot of tiny buttons up the back holding it on. Her torso was in dimension somewhere in between that of a baby puppet and one of the small puppets at the Opera House: he was not used to working on something so small but he regathered his optimism and carefully opened her up. Interestingly, while the rest of her shell was porcelain this compartment was white-enameled metal. Inside were workings quite small and intricate indeed, and he had her stand on the crate so he could examine them closely. Some of her cogwheels had worn or broken teeth. Sorting through the many salvaged ones in his pockets, he was able to find replacements for them all. He gently shifted aside some of her tubing as her bellows slowly expanded and contracted against his hand, and frowned at her pump. “Rosaura, when did you have an oil change last?”

“...I don’t know,” she said slowly. “My dear friend has helped me before, but it seems like it has been so long since I last saw him….”

“I think you need new oil,” the puppet said, and lifted her carefully off her feet, sitting her back down on the crate. “Can you open the ports in your heels? Or are they somewhere else in your design?”

“Oh, I know what you mean,” she said, and started to pull off her shoes. While she did so, the puppet went back a ways in the tunnels and dragged a couple of destroyed mining puppets back to the larger chamber. The oil that drained out of her was very thick and black: the stuff he was able to salvage from the mining puppets wasn’t terribly fresh either, and after a moment of thought he found a way to carefully siphon some of his own oil into her system. It was different, like Eugénie had suggested back when she examined him, clear and glimmering faintly blue. When it was done and her plates were closed up and outfit re-donned, Rosaura jumped up and down and spun in place.

“Feel better?” The puppet asked, and found that he was smiling. It felt good to have done something so simple and helpful. 

“Rosaura feels like she is full of starlight!” She said, and flung her arms around his leg. The puppet startled, but there was nothing violent about the gesture except its suddenness. He felt warmth, and patted her shoulder softly. 

“I’m glad,” he said. “Please be careful as you go.”

“As careful as anything,” she swore, and darted off down a tunnel that was too small for the puppet to follow.

***

Chapter Text

***

Seeing Venigni’s submarine told the puppet where he was underground immediately. “The ruins the Alchemists are looting in this time must connect to the Relic of Trismegistus,” the puppet said to Gemini, pocketing the few useful things he’d found around the harbor. “We can get back to the hotel from here and take the things we’ve found.”

“Sounds good,” the lamp agreed. “If that thing you left in the upgrader is done it might be just the ticket for fighting puppets.”

They both fell silent when the puppet entered a chamber off of the harbor and found a bare-bones sort of laboratory with tanks around the edges, one of which held— “Is that a human brain?” 

“It sure looks like it,” Gemini breathed out. “What the heck have the Alchemists—”

“Is that you?” a voice rang out from a speaker mounted on the tank; the same voice they’d heard from a puppet in the mines. “My charming, handsome, generous friend! My ears aren’t working like they should, of course, I told you that, and I tried to call a puppet here but it seems to be…well, never mind! I frankly do not care to guess how long I’ve been closed into this stuffy old box, I can’t even feel my arms and legs so I bet it has been a while. I don’t want to think about other bodily funct–ah, that is, never mind that either.” The voice got tighter and more anxious. “You can see it, right? The box? Is it dark in here for you too? I can only hear, you see, so it’s…God’s arm, don’t tell me it’s a coffin.”

“It is not a coffin,” the puppet said, examining the tank from all angles with great interest. What a strange way to live! “It is a large upright tank, a little bigger than a man, holding a brain attached to both metal wires and organic human wiring. How are you speaking?”

“It’s…what? A…naked, suspended brain in a vat? That can’t be me! It must just be some…some….” It spoke faster and faster. “I’m simply stuck in a small dark box, ask anyone! My arms and legs are numb, true, and it’s dark and my ears…my ears….” The voice trailed off and there was a long moment of silence. “No. No, that certainly would explain a few…no, it would explain everything, wouldn’t it? My limbs aren’t numb; they’re gone.”

“I’m sorry,” the puppet said, as comfortingly as he knew how. “It must be difficult to live as a brain in a jar. How did it happen?”

There was another long pause before it spoke again. “...look, enough with the jokes. ‘Brain in a jar’, hah-hah, truly funny! You’ve had your laugh, now be serious. What does the box look like? Strong, black—solid steel, maybe?” The voice shook, and stopped. “No, I don’t believe me either,” it finally said solemnly. “A brain in a jar. That’s all that’s left of me?”

“There’s a corpse on a cot in the corner,” the puppet said, trying to be helpful. “Not too old. Could it be yours?”

“‘Could it be mine’!” It said, shrilly. “Well, I’m sure I don’t know! Now, tell me, this thing I’m in—you said a tank a little bigger than a man. Is it in a cylindrical sort of case? With pipes attached to the sides, with a gauge at the intersection of them to show gas pressure?” 

“Yes.” He looked for the gauge the brain had mentioned and saw it spiderwebbed with cracks. “You know this machine, then?”

“Know it? I invented it! And here I have ended up, the subject of my own experiment! I’m doomed!”

“Your experiment,” the puppet confirmed, sympathy escaping him like the gas was escaping the machine. “You find it upsetting to be the subject, but you were willing to do this to other people?”

“Volunteers!” the speaker emitted shrilly. “The thought was that this could extend life for those at death’s door! Let them live long and comfortably in the vat, and control a puppet body to interact with the world—urgh, the puppets, how did I not realize! Stupid, stupid Alexander. Although in my defense, every previous experiment was a failure! How was I to know I would somehow be the first success?” The voice went weak and melancholy. “I wasn’t at death’s door. I was quite healthy—handsome, too, if you can believe it. Others often told me so. I bet that’s what got me into this mess—I was courting a woman who happened to be the daughter of a high-ranking Alchemist, you see…I knew her father would not approve, but to do this…!”

“This sort of thing seems to always happen to people who work with Alchemists,” the puppet said. “Is there some help you need? I could try bringing a puppet shell more functional than the one in here. There is gas coming from several places in the pipes, is that intended? The gauge seems broken.”

“What?” Its voice went high and panicky again. “Those tubes are the life support equipment! They’re meant to circulate Ergo gas, if it’s leaking away…without the gas there’s no way I’d last even a minute! I invented this machine, I know how it works!”

“I suppose I could try and stop up the leaks with something,” the puppet said doubtfully, looking around the room, “But I don’t know how I could go about getting more gas to refill it.” Maybe the brain could do it itself if given a proper puppet body to manipulate it?

“This machine can’t sustain life forever, not even in pristine condition,” it said. It sounded defeated. “I never got to that stage in the experiment…first success, me, remember? But despite that, it’s hopeless for me. I’m too smart to pretend otherwise.” Something like a laugh came out of the speaker. “I’m a brain in a vat. Does that really count as being alive? I don’t know any more.”

The puppet thought it probably did count. If puppets could be alive, then why not this? But clearly the brain was not interested in the details. “What would you like me to do?”

There was a long silence, broken only by the hiss of the escaping gas. “I’ve reached a conclusion…yes, I do have a favor to ask. I would like you to turn off the machine. I’d rather go out on my own terms.”

“I will.”

“Thank you, my friend. If I could ask one more favor…remember me please. Alexander Goodman, is my name. The inventor and first successful test subject of the Mindkeeper Machine.” It sounded almost at peace, now. “It will be good for this nightmare to come to an end. Thank you, my generous friend.”

“Good-bye, Alexander,” the puppet said, and found the lever to switch off the machine. His anger towards this Alchemist and his experiment had died out somewhere in their conversation. Maybe it was because the way the man spoke had reminded him a little of Venigni? Or because it seemed like an awful thing to have had done to you, even if you were a villain? Either way, he stood and waited to make sure all the lights died before he moved on to searching the room. 

***

The last of the crystal broke off the Guardian’s face and the puppet dodged a weak swing from its spear and drove his Legion arm into the socket where an eye should have been. With a full-power charge released from Fulminis, the creature’s massive skull split from the point of impact. The puppet had to scramble out of the way of its upper arm as it fell limply to the floor of the chamber with a wet thud. “My God, the size of that thing,” Gemini said with a whistle. “That was incredible, pal! What a take-down!”

“Thank you,” the puppet said, starting to search the chamber for anything useful. There was something glinting up in the big egg-case the creature had emerged from: he’d used all his arrows in the fight, but digging around in his pack he found a concussion grenade. With a precise throw it damaged the relevant portion of the case and something metallic fell from it, landing on the giant corpse. Picking his way to it the puppet found a unique sort of greatsword, one with a firearm built into the hilt. It was larger and more cumbersome than was his preference for weapons, but something about it felt…comfortable in his hand. Familiar, almost. “Do you think we can get back to the hotel from here?”

“Sure!” Gemini said promptly. “We’ll have to climb over that rubble that’s trying to block the way we came, but I can guess where the ruins meet the Relic of Trismisgistus and we know our way from there.”

It was a bit of a scramble at times—the puppet really wasn’t designed with climbing in mind—but they made it in one piece with all the things they had scavenged. After storing them he went to the Tracker with the Cipher Machine he had found, and while Eugénie’s brother worked on decoding it the puppet reported to him what he had found, in detail about the Guardian and in broad strokes for the rest of the mines. After the Tracker unlocked the machine and read the information within he passed it to the puppet to read. “Oh, the pickaxe—I know about that. I found a corpse, long dead, and these notes were with it.” He let Alidoro read that too.

“I can’t say I’m surprised to find the Alchemists were the cause of the Spider Cave incident,” he said drily when he was done. “I suspect they would not have guessed the truth would be uncovered by a puppet.” (The puppet felt a brief moment of panic thinking that he had been found out before realizing that he was probably referring to the miner.) “How many years does that come to for the poor miner puppet, standing alone swinging his pickaxe in the dark? The thought of it truly makes my heart ache. I dare say it showed more humanity than most Alchemists. “I pray the two friends found peace at last.”

It warmed the puppet’s heart, to know that Eugénie’s brother could feel something like that for a puppet: one he had never even met in person. It seemed like the miner had been a better friend to the human than the reverse, but then it had called the human ‘my friend’ with its last words. “I suppose they did,” the puppet said thoughtfully. Unless disturbed by Alchemist experiments or rewound by a Listener, death seemed like it would be quite a peaceful state to be in. “Were you able to solve the other mystery?”

“Ah. Yes, fortunately.” The Tracker passed the puppet a letter. “Poor Rex was framed, it seems.”

When he finished reading the puppet found himself smiling a little. “I’m glad he didn’t eat his friend.” It would be upsetting, the puppet thought, if he were killed by Alchemists and they somehow managed to convince people Spring had done it. 

“As am I.” He shifted slightly, crossing his arms. “Lumacchio…it is disturbing that he just so happened to be at the mines. I have nothing more than a hunch to give you, so I will just say this: I think you are wise to be wary of his intentions.”

“Yes.” The puppet hesitated, then gathered his courage and cleverness. “Along the same notes…there is a Stalker named Parrot, who has some similar interests to you: specifically, he likes secrets of the past and hidden treasures. For that reason you may come across him in the course of your investigations, so I wanted to warn you…you may wish to hesitate to give him any trust.”

“Parrot,” the Tracker said slowly, nodding. “Very well, I will remember your warning.”

“I should go to the coast, it seems, to continue following Lea. The tram to the Rose Estate was destroyed: if I keep going through the ruins will I come out near the coast?”

“You should, though I have no thorough map of the ruins.” The Tracker dug in his pack and came up with two items. The first, a small brown bottle, he shook lightly so that small somethings rattled inside. “This is for her, should you meet her as you intend. Painkillers: she should recognize them. And in repayment for acting as a messenger this way—” he gave the puppet a curious little item that felt cool and heavy in his hand. 

“Thank you. If I do not see you again: stay safe.” The puppet went and traded some of the things he had found with Klaus, including the object the Tracker had just given him. He took the gold coin fruits that had ripened in his time away, and tucked them carefully in with the others. With the supplies from Klaus and the places below he had enough parts to finish the new Legion arm, the one the blueprints called ‘Icarus’: he considered swapping for the benefits of the long-ranged attack, but decided to keep Fulminis due to not having enough resources to upgrade Icarus to its full potential. Instead it stashed it with the other weapons and parts in the hidden attic location. On the way back he encountered the baby cat and sat on a covered sofa to try and coax her near. “She likes me right away,” he said quietly as she perched on his knee and demanded scritches. “Spring did not like me at all, at first.”

“Cats are pretty smart,” Gemini said. “She was probably just trying to be cautious around strange puppets, so once she knew you were safe she was ready to become friends!” The baby cat curled up on the puppet’s thigh, engine-like purr strong, then fell silent as—

“Is she asleep?” The puppet whispered.

“Looks like it,” Gemini whispered back.

“...I should be going,” the puppet said reluctantly. “To continue our task.”

“...seems awful mean to kick her off when she’s so comfy,” the cricket said. “Surely a few minutes won’t hurt?”

“Just a few,” the puppet agreed. He pulled out the pages torn from the folk tale book and started reading it again. When he was half-way through he stopped. “The poor mining puppet,” he began slowly. “He wasn’t…Rockhead, Rockbuster, and Steel Pickaxe are all terrible names.” He shook himself a little, and petting the cat to sooth her when she shifted and grumbled in her sleep. “I don’t want to possibly die with no name, or rely upon others to give me one.”

“That makes sense,” Gemini said. The puppet thought he was trying to play at being calm so as not to make the puppet uncomfortable. “Did you…have something in mind?”

The puppet smoothed the papers against the thigh that did not hold a cat. “...Pinocchio,” he whispered after a moment.

“!!” The monad lamp flared so brightly it buzzed with it. “You did pick one! Amazing! I’m so happy for you, pal—or Pinocchio, I should say!”

“Is it a good name?” the puppet asked anxiously.

“Incredible!” Gemini said instantly. “It really suits you! And anyone who hears it will know you’re a Krat boy, won’t they? Everyone here knows and likes that story!” He calmed himself a little before continuing. “It will make people think of the wooden puppet for sure—but that’s not a problem, as long as you don’t mind that?”

“I picked it because of the story,” Pinocchio said. “It’s….” he had to stop a moment to try and put his words in order. “It was Carlo’s favorite,” he finally whispered. “I think it was his favorite because…because he liked the puppet’s mischief. And he liked that…that the father in the story cared about his son so much.”

“Those are good reasons,” Gemini said kindly. “And what are your reasons?”

Pinocchio felt warmth at his friend not assuming they would be the same. “The puppet is not very clever, and he does bad things,” he said, words tumbling out one after the other, “–but his friends and family help him and teach him. He learns a lot and becomes better and helps his father in the end.” His words died out. He admitted, “I also like that the father cares about his puppet so much.” And he liked—though he was somehow reluctant to say it—that Carlo had liked the story. It was…nice, to think that Carlo had liked 'Pinocchio', even without ever meeting Geppetto’s puppet.

“Well I think it makes perfect sense!” Gemini declared. “What a great name! Bet you can’t wait to tell our other friends, huh? Oh! Should we make a nickname for you? ‘Pinocchio’ is a little long, it would be fun to have a shorter nickname—and there’s so many possibilities! Pino! Kio? Nokki!”

“...Pin,” Pinocchio said. He realized that he was smiling. “You say, when there is a problem we can’t deal with right away but will fix later, you say ‘Let’s put a pin in it’. And Antonia said pins hold pieces together.”

“And this Pin is basically holding all of Krat together,” Gemini said radiantly. “Fantastic! I'm really glad to meet you, Pin.”

“And I, you, Gem,” Pin said. His smile was so wide it pushed up his cheeks and narrowed his vision—he didn’t know it could do that. “Shall we go and deal with a problem?”

***

Chapter Text

“Oh! It’s you! My forever friend.”

“Hello, Rosaura,” Pin said, glad to see her alive. “Are you still going to the Rose Estate? That is it over the water, right?”

“Well, that is,” she said. Her hands went behind her back and the toes of one of her shoes nudged at the ground. “I followed a white butterfly here. I…I found the Rose Estate, but it’s full of sadness now. I can’t go inside.”

“Sadness?” he asked.

“You don’t think,” Gemini whispered. “The…the charity house tragedy..?”

“If it is not safe then it’s good that you didn’t go in,” the puppet decided. “Are you upset that you couldn’t do as you wished?”

“I’m okay,” she said simply, clasping her hands together again. It sounded like she would smile if her face plate was articulated. “I have the world again, even if I can’t go to this one part of it. You gave me that! My new friend who looks like my old friend.”

Carlo. Pin carefully untied his mask and looked at her without it. She nodded, rocking back and forth.

“I miss my old friend. But it’s okay that you’re not him!” she added hurriedly. “You’re on your own journey, and I think that’s wonderful.”

He knelt on the icy stone so that he was no longer taller than her. “Thank you.” He hesitated. “Am I…am I very different from Carlo?”

“A lot!” she said cheerfully. “My Carlo was—” she waved her hands through the air like two small birds. “...zippy! And grand! Always making big gestures and big words! You’re a lot…still-er.”

“Still?” The puppets thought of the houses he had gone through on Elysion Boulevard, and the butler and maid puppets inside that would just stand in the same spots unless they saw him. “Like a puppet without an ego waiting for instructions?”

“Mm…not really. More like…a duck!” She waved her hands again, now making downwards scooping gestures. “All calm and quiet on the surface, but with a lot going on underneath.”

“Still waters run deep,” Gemini piped up.

Rosaura giggled and clapped. “Yes, exactly! I loved my dear friend so much, but he got in a lot of trouble because he would act first and think later. I feel like you think an awful lot.” She reached her hands out to him, and when he gave her his right one she held its knuckles to her cold porcelain cheek. “You are alike in some ways. You are very, very kind, friend.”

“Pin,” he blurted, though it made him feel a little embarrassed. “Pinocchio. My name.”

“Oh, where are my manners!” she let go of his hand to hold her skirt to the sides, bobbing at the knees as she bowed her head. “I’m very glad to meet you, Pin!”

The puppet didn’t have a skirt, but he tried to echo her gesture from his knees anyway. “And I’m glad to meet you.”

She swayed from side to side. He was pleased to know that most of the hitch in her movements was gone after his repair. “Um, will you promise me something? When your journey ends, let’s meet again in a pretty place. Rosaura will wait for you there!”

“Pin really wants to meet you again too,” he said honestly. “When I finish a task I go home to Hotel Krat. Could you meet me there?”

“I would like to see the hotel,” she said, and pulled something out from her pockets to give to him. “But how about here? It is for friendship!”

Along with another scrap of drawing there was a photo of a tree that the puppet recognized. “All right,” he agreed. “If I do not see you at the hotel, I will look for you there.” He sat back on his heels. “Rosaura…you know Carlo is dead?”

“I suppose so,” she said to the stones between her feet. “He left, and told me to stay in a safe place—there was a place behind the history section in the library, you know!—but he did not come back for so very long that I had to leave to try and find Ergo. I think that’s when I got put in the bird cage.” She cocked her head. “I think my mind is not designed to hold those kinds of thoughts, though. If I concentrate very hard I know my dear Carlo is…gone. And that is horrible. But mostly when I think of him I simply think of the hundreds and hundreds of good memories we made together at the Rose Estate. So instead of sad, thinking of him makes me mostly feel grateful. He kept me, you know! Even when he got all big and grown-up and didn’t like the same games any more, he never threw me away.”

“I don’t throw away things I love, either,” Pin said, and for once thought of Carlo with nothing more complicated than gratitude.

****

“Who are you?”

The blade at his throat did not frighten him: the way the Stalker had been coughing as he approached he knew that he could dodge aside before it took his head. “My name is Pin,” he said, and a thrill went through him at giving a name to a human for the first time. “I am here because of this.” He held out the bloodied locket he had taken from the abandoned coat in the zoo.

The blade tip dropped. “Wait,” the stalker said softly. She reached for what he was holding out, but he could tell from her stance that her guard was not down. “This is…Romeo’s locket. How..?” She fumbled at the straps of her mask until it came off. Her face was pale, and blue veins of petrification ran through her right eye socket. “This is something precious to me. Thank you for returning it. But…first I should ask: how did you find me?” Her poise was already returning.

“I was at the zoo, dealing with Alchemists,” he said. “I saw a poster about Stalker Romeo being missing. I found myself following in your footsteps.” He nodded once, firmly. “You killed a lot of Alchemists. That was good.”

“Glad to have your approval,” she said reservedly. “You followed me all the way here?”

“I worked with your friend the Tracker to defeat monsters in the research facility under the hotel,” he said. He found that he was standing very straight with his hands behind his back, as though he were reporting to Geppetto. This woman did not frighten him, though. It was more like she just made him…want her to think he was good. “He was worried about you, and suggested I look to the coast. He seems like he is a good friend to you.”

“The Tracker has always looked after others,” she said with a strange bitterness. “He is guided by his principles. I would say that ‘comrades’ describes us more accurately than ‘friends’. Even if I were the social type, that person would still hold all his cards close to the chest. That said…I respect him. I’m willing to listen to you, if he trusts you enough to provide you with information on my comings and goings.” She laughed drily. “An irksome quirk of his: always wasting time on lost causes.”

“Fighting the Alchemists is not a lost cause,” Pin said firmly. “We can win. I think we can find your apprentice too.” Carefully, he nodded at her hand that still held the locket. He was so curious about everything, but this would have to be done carefully. “There were three people in the picture?”

She opened it again. “It’s the last print left,” she said tiredly. “A pity it’s damaged.” She looked at it for a moment longer then snapped it shut once more. “A memory of my two apprentices and I in happier days long gone.” She looked away, though she did not give him her back and her sword-arm was still free. “I was tough on them. A fool, to not realize how precious that time was. When tragedy befell us I couldn’t bear to face the past but Romeo…Romeo kept the locket for me.” On the sliver of her face he could see there was a smile, but it was terribly sad. “But then he always was braver than his arrogant teacher. So to answer your tactful non-question: no. There is no third person who will be coming to my aid.”

“The Tracker sent some things for you,” he said, and carefully opened his bag again. “A bottle of medicine, and some sort of fruit: he said they are supposed to help with many ailments.”

“Even incurable ones? Like hell,” she said tightly. “Sorry. Thank you.” She immediately swallowed several pills from the bottle, then held one of the gold coin fruits up to the light. “For the Tracker to trust you speaks volumes. He is not a man who opens up to others easily. Can I trust you?”

“Yes,” the puppet said, hoping that she could hear the truth in it. “Yes. My only goal is to help you.”

“Why?”

Pin gave the answer that was honest even if it was not complete. “I hate the Alchemists. I want to fight them, and they are your enemy too. I have spoken to several people during this journey who say that you helped them: that is admirable. I want to help you in return.” He shrugged. “Do you know where Romeo is?”

“All this is because of that damned Arlecchino,” she spat out. She bit into one of the fruits and almost froze for a moment before finishing it. “That wicked puppet and I have a history. When he went on a rampage nearly a decade ago I was the one who put an end to his reign of terror. I did my best in the battle to destroy him utterly, so perhaps he bears some grudge. Evil to the core.” She looked aside again. “They said a murderer’s ego awakened within his Ergo. Can a puppet be considered human through ego alone?”

“I don’t know,” the puppet said soberly. Puppets were puppets and humans were humans, but as far as he could see, a puppet made with a human’s crystallized Ergo was somewhere strangely in-between.

“He certainly seems to bear a grudge like one,” she said. “If it were merely against me, who destroyed him, one might almost consider it fair—but he dragged Romeo into this, and I will not let that stand! He left me an invitation of sorts…” she handed a flyer to Pin, who read over it quickly. “To think he was all but under my nose. No time for regrets: he is at the Rose Estate, and Romeo with him.”

“Then we shall go to the Rose Estate.”

“Do you truly mean that?” She had eaten another fruit, he was relieved to see. Already her breathing seemed just a little less labored. “You could be putting your life on the line. I would like to say that I don’t need your—or anybody’s—help. But the last time I fought Arlecchino I only barely managed to get the upper hand.” She smiled without joy. “And that’s when I was healthy. With no guarantee I will win this time, and with Romeo’s life at stake, I will gladly accept your help.” She stood straight and saluted. “From one Stalker to another, I, Lea Florence, ask for your aid in battle.”

Pin saluted in return. “You shall have it.” 

She let her saber drop and nodded once. “We must find a way into the Rose Estate. Its defenses are formidable, despite what one might assume at first glance.” She grimaced. “I used to have a key, but I have…lost it.”

“Ah!” he said, pleased to have an answer to this. He dug through the pocket where he kept the keys he found. “This was in Zelator, it looked important—is it yours?”

“Wh-how??” She accepted it, turning it over with a look of astonishment. “You found–? Never mind. You must be part crow, hoarding all the things you come across. This solves one problem, to be sure.” She put the remaining fruit in her belt pouch along with the pills, and took a long drink of water before dragging her sleeve across her mouth and drawing her saber once again. “Is there anything you need to do to be ready?”

The puppet thought a moment. If they were facing Arlecchino, his current weapon arrangement—the explosive ‘Vendetta’ head on his spear haft—would work quite well. He also took out his salamander dagger blade, quickly affixing it to his rapier hilt, and hung that on his belt as well. “I am ready.” His curiosity overcame his caution. “Is your lamp broken?”

Gemini didn’t say anything, silent as he’d been since they came within reach of the cabin, but the puppet could feel him listening.

“Merely…non-functional, at present.” She nodded an acknowledgement at the one hanging from his own belt, yellow and glowing instead of still and dark like hers. “Not many people use Monad Lamps these days. I’m sure I’ll find someone who can get mine working as well as yours soon enough.”

“I understand,” Pin said. Gemini didn’t say anything: they had agreed in advance that would be wise, but the puppet gently tapped the lamp in reassurance all the same.

****

The skirmishes on the way to the Rose Estate had accustomed Pin to fighting with Lea at his side, and it was serving them well now. The Alchemists had given Arlecchino a large and vicious new body, but the Stalkers were holding their own against him, chipping away bit by bit. Fighting with Lea could not be compared to fighting beside a wish-summoned specter or even Alidoro: it was almost like there was another of himself there, matching him move-for move. It was a dance, and blood mixed with wine flew through the air with every dash and strike. And the whole time, Arlecchino talked. At first he was largely focused on Lea, but at some point his attention had shifted to Pinocchio instead.

“None of my work led me to anything like you!” He grabbed Geppetto’s puppet by the throat, his other arm blocking his weapon. “How?? Why are you different?”

“Because you are useless at science,” Pin grunted. Because the maid puppet who was loved is different from the one who was not. “Idiot!” There were many similarities between this frame and the puppet king’s, and he saw a gap in the shoulder joint he recognized: he rammed the stiffed fingers of Fulminis into it and set off the strongest charge he could. Arlecchino seized and dropped him, though he managed to wrench his main weapon away. Undaunted, the puppet took advantage of his low position to stab the salamander dagger into tubing at the puppet’s waist that had been exposed by one of Lea’s earlier slashes, and a gush of clear golden liquid came forth even as the blade snagged and caught. He rolled away as Arlecchino staggered, realizing too late that he was taking himself further from both his weapons. 

“Did you have to spoil the fun?” Arlecchino’s voice was full of static, and he yanked out the salamander dagger and began to run at Pin, who grasped at his belt and sucked in a foul breath as he realized all his bombs were long gone—

“Take this!”

Lea’s saber came to his hand like it was made for it, and he pulled at all the power within both himself and the sword for one final ruinous blow.

“Ah,” Arlecchino sighed as he collapsed, limbless, into the blood and wine; “It was fun…while it lasted….”

“Go to hell,” the puppet suggested. Retrieving his dagger, he wrenched wide the fallen puppet’s bronze jaw and cut out its tongue with a single sharp stroke. He looked to Lea, who was staggering from where she had fallen.

“Romeo,” she struggled to say. “Pin, Romeo—”

“I think if you stand on my shoulders you can reach his bindings,” Pin offered instantly. He went to help her walk, and they went to the archway together. Was Romeo even alive? He was hanging so limply…. He stuck the Rose Sword through his belt and passed his dagger to Lea, and with his help she stood on his shoulders and began to cut the bindings one by one.

“There we are, darling,” she was saying softly as she went, a constant stream of reassurance at her injured apprentice. “Oh, you silly boy. Thought you were so tough, didn’t you? No longer in need of your tired old master. We’ll have you set to right in moments, just you see….” when the last binding was cut, Romeo’s body dropped like a stone into Pin’s arms and Lea fell off his shoulders backwards.

“Are you all right?” He asked her, carefully laying the Stalker out on the topmost stone step.

“Never mind me, what about him?” she coughed, scrabbling through the reddened snow to kneel at Romeo’s other side. “Gods and devils, Arlecchino, you monster…can you get this damned thing off him?”

“Yes.” The mask-thing was held on with bolts and straps that were easily enough detached, but the iron collar was on so strongly that the puppet had to strain until his actuators whined to wrench it apart. When it was off, Lea moved to gently cradle Romeo's head in her lap.

He was breathing.

“Good boy,” she said softly, brushing the hair off of his forehead where the bolts had left sluggish trails of red. “Good boy, Romeo. You just keep breathing, all right?”

“I will get your satchel,” Pin volunteered, and ran back across the courtyard to the door where he had seen it and dropped his own pack to join the battle. He grabbed his and hers both and took them back, picking up his main weapon on the way. “Is he…?” The puppet fidgeted, anxious, as he looked down at them. “He’s alive, right?”

“Of course he is,” she said firmly. “He’s tough. Can you…the pain pills, in my bag, maybe if they were crushed….” Pin did as ordered, and crushed several pills to powder in the fingers of his Legion arm. Lea tilted up Romeo's head and shook the powder on to his tongue. He shifted, and his brow furrowed. “Quit moaning about the taste, you brat. Here, a bit of water.” She trickled water from her canteen into his mouth, and after a breathless moment he swallowed. 

The puppet was extremely curious about how Arlecchino had managed to attach puppet limbs to Romeo’s human body—they were even shifting with little movements, so they seemed to be active and working. He obviously couldn’t just examine them, though, so instead he stood up and held out the saber. “Here.”

Lea looked at it for a long moment with her pale eyes. Eventually, one of her hands reached up and closed his fingers around the hilt. “It’s yours now,” she said. She shifted, careful not to disturb her apprentice, and took the scabbard off her belt. She watched with a faint smile as Pin buckled on the scabbard and sheathed the sword in a single economical motion, then held up a hand to shade her eyes as the first bright rays of sunlight broke over the roof of the Rose Estate. “All this time,” she said wonderingly, looking into the sunrise like it was the answer to a wish, “I wondered why you looked so familiar. And now I know.”

The last word broke up: the puppet was breaking up, dissolving into flecks of light as though Sophia was rewinding time, but these flecks were blue and white both. If she said something else he did not hear it.

They were gone.

***