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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 her 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. 

***