Act 42: First Hire of The Cabaret (III)- Troubles In The Kitchen

--- Joshua ---

Weaving Madness into a proper dream took significantly more time and effort than he thought it would, even with Avery’s warning about just that. (Though I am getting the egg analogy…)

The initial process required him to gather a bunch of madness together and condense it down as much as possible, all while feeding the slowly growing sphere of Madness the various ideas he had for the Boss Dream in question. A task that became increasingly difficult as he added more and more Madness to the Dream, part of him scared that if he didn’t feed the Dream enough Madness that it wouldn’t form right.

(Really regretting that now…) He couldn’t help but grimace as he tried to hold the Madness together, every second building more and more pressure inside of his skull. “Sh-shouldn’t this be easier? I mean, the GM ‘s been doing this since she was a kid!”

“Um, Madness likes kids?” Was the best Avery could apparently offer as the Cabaret Manager brought more and more madness out of storage. “I-I don’t know, it-it was never this hard for the old boss… I think?”

“None of that really helps.” He was forced to admit as he continued to will the Madness into shape, something it was actively resisting.

(Come on, give me a chef that’s a fast cook, good with food, and-and can lead a bunch of mini-chefs around.) He told the Madness within him as something damp began to leak down his face.

“Maybe… maybe you’re trying too hard?” Avery suggested unsurely.

“Trying too hard?” He growled out as another knife of pain shot through his head.

“Y-yeah.” The Cabaret Manager winced, before trying to explain that, “If, if kids can do this then, then maybe your problem is you’re trying too hard to shape the Dream?”

“Then how am I supposed to turn it into the Dream I want?” He gasped, being forced to give the Madness space whether he liked it or not from how much resistance it was putting up.

“Madness, madness likes to change… Maybe, maybe if you just nudge it it’ll start changing on its own?” Avery grimaced with a helpless shrug.

That didn’t really sound like it should work to him, but given how much his head was starting to pound? He decided to just say, “Fuck it…” and stumble back from the sphere of compressed Madness.

Almost immediately he felt the pressure inside his skull let up, even if he still felt a sort of swirling tenseness from where he could usually find his connection to his Madness.

“Okay… better for me but… I can’t tell if anything is happening now?” He gasped as he tried to catch his breath.

“I… can’t either.” Avery admitted with a nervous frown as he began to walk around the sphere of Madness. “I-I know I haven’t seen a Boss Dream made in a while but like you said it really shouldn’t be this hard…”

“Maybe because of how much Madness we put together?” He could see that as being the part where he screwed up.

“No.” The Boss Dream almost immediately shot down. “I mean, I’ve got more Madness in me than this seed. So that shouldn’t be the problem…”

“Yeah, but I’m also pretty sure the Boss was a lot more experienced when he made you.” He felt the need to point out.

“No, no, that… that can’t be it.” Avery ran a hand through his hair as he let out a frustrated sigh. “We’re so close to fixing the Cabaret… What’s wrong? What’s different between now and when the old boss did this?”

With a moment to think about it, he eventually realized that there was one major difference between him and the old boss. “Maybe… Maybe it has to do with my Malice corruption?”

“Your Malice Corruption?” Avery repeated with a frown.

He nodded. “Yeah, you mentioned before that you don’t like working with Malicious Madness. Might that be interfering here, because we did put a decent amount of it into this Dream since we’ve got so much of it.”

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“That’s… possible…” The Cabaret Manager gave the seed of Madness another once over. “I… I don’t know enough about… Malice to be sure one way or the other though…”

“Okay, given how it’s the easiest Madness for me to gather, we’re going to have to figure out how to make it work.” He told his dream as he considered the condensed Madness once more. “Alright, so you said we have to gather Madness together and condense it, which we’ve done. Then we pick the place and job we want to give it, which is a chef for the kitchen. There’s got to be something we’re missing…”

“Well… what do we actually know about Malice?” Avery wondered.

“I know that like Madness it makes me stronger, makes my powers easier to use, while generating Ink, and on top of that it also refills whatever I use to fuel my healing factor.” He listed out, before tossing his hands. “Oh, and to top it off Malice also gives me more Madness to work with… All of which makes it too valuable to just toss aside.”

“Yeah, but… What does Malice feel like to you?” Avery asked. “I mean, when I work with Malicious Madness it feels… angry and hungry and… dangerous…”

“Really?” He frowned. “I mean, I’ve felt the angry and hungry from the Madness but I’ve never really felt the dangerous. Heck, I don’t even feel the angry or hungry when I use it most of the time.”

Avery’s face twisted. “You don’t?”

“Nah, if anything it gets my heart pounding and it makes me almost… whimsical?” He tried to explain. “If anything it’s more like Liberating Madness when I use it.”

“Hmm, well then what do you know about other Voodoo Boys -er- Deviants(?) who use Malice?” His Boss Dream tried instead.

“Well according to all the games I’ve played, Malcontent and Slashers are the only real Deviancies to use Malice regularly.” He shrugged. “Though I’m not sure how connected their Malice is to the drug I’m taking.”

“It’s somewhere to start at the very least.” Avery shrugged back. “So what do you know about Malcontent and Slashers?”

“Malcontent are like shapeshifters who -I think- eat people like Deadmen, but that might be propaganda after the whole Tallman thing.” They were rare enough that he didn’t know for sure, what he did know was that, “There aren’t a whole lot of open Malcontent out there, so there’s no telling what’s fact or fiction.”

The Dream nodded. “Okay, and what about Slashers?”

“Serial killers who grow stronger with every kill.” He easily answered. “There is a metric shit ton of horror stories about them. From killing thousands of people, to turning places into murder motels, or even making reality itself bleed if you believe the more far out stuff.”

“Really?” Avery smiled an odd tone to his voice. “And you’re uh, you’re using their… stuff in the Cabaret?”

“Uh, I guess so?” (Hadn’t put that together before…)

“Great!” Avery laughed, shaking ever so slightly before visible inhaling and exhaling. “One moment please.”

The cabaret manager turned away from him and hunched over while faintly mumbling. “Remember how desperate you are. Remember how desperate you are. The cabaret is coming back. It’s worth it. It is…”

“You… okay?” He felt the need to ask.

Avery stood and spun on his heels with a wide grin. “I am wonderful! Thank you!”

“You sure?” He pressed, knowing that something was going on with his Dream.

“Yep.” Avery nodded. “But thinking about it, given how… violent the other Malice Deviancies seem to be, maybe you need to… make this Boss a little more… combative.”

“Combative?” He frowned.

“Yes, you know more… fight oriented.” The Cabaret Manager clarified.

“So instead of just making a chef, I should go for a combat chef?” He scoffed. “Like what someone that throws around food in a literal food fight? And his speedy food lets him prep dishes in seconds for more ammo?”

“Boss?” Avery blinked.

He rolled his eyes. “Or heck maybe they can make like this one villain from a kids show and any food she throws out will come to life as monsters of some kind? And then every recipe they make will be a different edible monster that if you’re unlucky will poison you instead because monsters clearly wouldn’t want to be eaten.”

“Boss…”

He felt he was on a roll and in turn ignored the Cabaret Manager. “And then because they’re a chef they’ll of course be able to throw around cooking flames though that’s kind of generic… Yeah, no, let’s double down on the edible monster thing. That sounds way cooler, and I’ve seen like a dozen fire chefs but only a couple monster chefs or no… Pastry-mancers? No, too sweet… It’s got to be a pun a… a Culinaromancer! Like, like a culinary necromancer… I’m trying too hard with that one aren’t I? Damn, I could’ve made that work if I used a day of the dead candy skull instead of an actual undead skull. There’s, there’s potential there…”

“You done boss?” Avery asked in a dry tone.

“Uh, yeah?” He shook his head as he realized how out of it he’d gotten. “Sorry, I let myself get a little worked up there. Kind of just let my imagination run wild, you know?”

The Cabaret Manager nodded slowly, “I see… Remember that for next time.”

“Next time?” He frowned.

Avery grabbed the top of his head and turned him towards the Madness sphere as it began to slowly turn into a skeletal-like figure wearing a dress and hooded apron.

The figure’s face was covered in flowers and swirling lines on a white face that seemed to flicker between a painted skull and a human depending on what angle he was looking at. From within the darkness of the eye sockets two large eyes blinked open and seemed to slowly open before locking eyes with him.

“Oh, hello…”

“Hola?”