Chikita was seated at an elegantly-decorated tea party table, tastefully lain with doilies, and was pouring the wampus cat - tied up and irritated on the chair across from her - another cup. They were surrounded by Cuppy's collection of animal plushies, and in each of the other three chairs there were tiny doll effigies of her clients, sans Holly's, who was in the waste bin.
"Oh Mistress Chikita," Chikita voiced Hottie Minion, "you are such a great host. The strongest, most beautiful warrior in all the realms."
"Yes, I concur, when I can have coherent thoughts outside the perpetual daydream of my wobbly kaleidoscope mind. You are truly the best among us." said Creepy Minion.
"Pass me another donut, bitches." said Potato Minion.
"Watch your tone, lowly vassal." Chikita narrowed her eyes at the goth ragdoll.
"Yes, beta-female," Hottie Minion chastised her. "Do not offend our radiant goddess."
The wampus cat groaned and rolled its eyes. Comparatively, it was starting to miss Cuppy.
Be careful what you wish for.
All of a sudden, each of the dolls were chopped in half vertically, and instantly switched places with their corresponding people. Richie, Cuppy, and Freyja, popped into existence in the chairs.
A mutual heart attack was shared by all but Cuppy, who was the only one in on his emergency escape strategy, and who had not bothered to tell any of his kindred that he left swap dolls of them down in his Viet-Cup tunnel network. You could never be too cautious.
"JESUS CHRIST!" Chikita leaped back, dinky tea party chair tipping over backwards, causing her to spill herself on her head and involuntarily somersault.
"Agreed." Freyja clutched her chest, panting, eyes wide. "Are… are we dead?"
Richie looked around the clubhouse - made up much the same as a little girl's dollhouse, and containing Chikita - and nodded. "Clearly we're in Hell."
Cuppy pat the wampus cat. "Hi Snaggles."
The wampus cat reneged on its affection for the green eldritch abomination, and bit his face, pulling him into range with its twin tails. Previously, they had been engaged in covertly picking at his bonds, trying to free himself. However, mauling the short one always took priority. Bar none.
Freyja picked up Holly's doll out of the bin, and looked at Cuppy. "You clever little berry." she smirked.
Cuppy smiled nervously. "Thanks."
Richie began lightly kicking Cuppy. "You little runt, we were scared shitless!"
Cuppy started laughing helplessly. "I was scared too! Hahaha, I didn't know how far away the range would still work! Hehehe!"
Freyja scanned the room, whistling sarcastically, then looked at Chikita.
"You're, uh… you're back early…" she said, averting her eyes.
Richie took a seat. "Well? Are you going to fill 'er up or what?" he jiggled his teacup.
-
The shades looked around the hotel room, confused. Cuppet flipped them off, realizing his brother's ploy, and impaled himself on his scissor. An effigy in his likeness appeared in his place, a hole down the middle, and flopped to the floor lifelessly. Clicking and chittering, a shade picked the doll up in its cold talons, confused. Distantly, it heard the children's screams as Cuppet dropped into the tea party as well. Then it looked up as it heard approaching footsteps. The door swung open, revealing not the hallway of the hotel floor, but a dank catacombs. Claws scrapped slate as Luchesi stalked into the room, hidden under poofy layers of a new black and white harlequin costume, face hidden behind a plaster theater mask. This time, it wore the crestfallen frown of Tragedy. Luchesi gazed around the room, then saw the doll in the shade's clutches.
Instantly, he had the squealing thing by the face, squeezing painfully and cracking the skull it didn't have as it thrashed around in an animalistic panic.
"Trying to steal my prey from me?" Luchesi's poison words leaked out of the carved mouth of his pale mask.
He jammed his new claws, which erupted painfully from under his fingernails, through the soulless wretch's chest, then ripped it diagonally in half. The bisected shade scattered to fading wisps of black smoke. The Cuppet doll dropped to the floor. Luchesi glared down at the doll.
"I see." he held his chin. He stifled spasmodic twists of pain as his muscles tore, the tumorous swells of flesh on his shoulders growing larger again before he forcefully retracted them. "You can run, but you can't hide."
Another lingering shade, mistaking the moment of agony for an opportunity to attack and sate its cheated hunger, tried to pounce the jester from behind. Without even looking, Luchesi flung his arm backward and slashed the would-be opportunist to fetid mist. The remaining stragglers chittered indecisively.
"You can run, but you can't hide, you rotten brats." Luchesi spat with contempt, claws trembling with eagerness to rip the children to tiny pieces. As if as an afterthought, he looked at the shades. "Come. You'll be an appetizer before the main course."
…
Richie, Cuppy, and Freyja turned up at the check-in desk again, late that night. The same handsome clerk who had first checked them in was there, and visibly confused.
"Huh?" he looked back toward the Gamble Gate behind him, able to swear that he had never seen the kids leave from it.
Maybe he needed to catch some more sleep.
-
"Well," Freyja scratched her ear, standing in the lobby of the hotel, "there's still time to kill before the big twink vs chungus show."
Richie finished the legwork up at the desk and joined his companions in the cushy waiting room, lined with soft white carpet and crowded with pillow-piled sofas. "Got the tickets," he flashed them in front of his friends. "But they're just paper till tomorrow night."
"Feel like skimming anymore casino games?" Freyja asked Cuppy, her hands folded behind her head.
Cuppy's eyes were spinning. "How many in a row is that?"
"Huh?" Richie asked.
"Cards. Counting. Where's Snaggles?" Cuppy said, steam rising off of his head.
"Think the engine overheated." Richie waved his hand in front of Cuppy's twitchy face.
"Alright, all work and no play fries Cuppy's egg." Freyja said.
"To the midway!" Richie announced, marching the trio on their way to Carnival Top's centerpiece, the big top fairgrounds.
Within, they soon found a vast, neon-carpeted floor of whirring arcade and carnival games, filled with hokey organ music. Huge circus-striped tarps sheltered games of chance and shooting galleries, vendors traipsing about the aisles with hot dog carts and bundles of balloons. The clatter of skee balls and the pops of dart-struck balloons wove in and out of the fantastical medley. High-pitched and resounding, a bell rang somewhere, announcing the might of whoever just tested their strength and passed with flying colors. Throngs of feral children running off from or running rings around their weary parents pushed and shoved and tripped over each other, and tripped-out college kids on enough acid to irreparably drive horses insane vegged out to the pretty colors and festive atmosphere. In the flashing distance, huge roller coasters and thrill rides rattled and shook, screams of glee and terror carried on the popcorn-thick wind. Faintly, Freyja's nose picked up a fresh puddle of vomit somewhere near a ride gate. Probably one of those tilty, spinny rides. Cuppy looked up and let his mouth fall open in slack-jawed awe at a huge set of wavy plastic slides, colored yellow, blue, pink, and green. His strings could feel the static charge of electricity generated by the woolen blankets the sliders were given to ride down in. Richie's eyes followed a drop tower's ring of seats as it rose high and then fell with heart-dropping speed and suddenness.
The three kids looked at each other in a circle, then grinned.
If Cuppy's vitality could be represented as a car's gas gauge, and some shade prick had just siphoned his tank, then this indoor amusement park was a fueling station.
Richie smirked. "And go."
-
Cuppy wielded his mighty mallet, standing on a stepstool to get the necessary vantage point over the battlefield. The neon-lit subterranean saboteurs poked in and out of their extensive tunnel network.
"Out of my heckin' clubhouse!" Cuppy brought the hammer of judgment down upon the brazen enemy of justice who had the audacity to mock him. A chime recorded his might within the akashic record posted above them.
He really played a mean game of whack a mole.
"There! There! There! There!" Cuppy's mallet fell across the desolate, pockmarked wasteland.
"My turn." Richie cracked his knuckles as the war came to its intermission. "Check this shit out. Level 2 engaged."
Richie felt his muscles tense with bottled lightning, his brain reprogrammed to act on the slightest movement the exact moment a mole popped its stupid face out of its burrow. He was a blur across the machine, as if dozens of padded mallets were storming over the panel at once.
"Beat that shit." Richie put his arms behind his head, fingers laced, eyes closed with a smug expression.
Freyja took up the mallet, and with it, the weight of the noble crusade.
"And begin!" Cuppy chirped.
A mole popped out. The mallet fell, and Freyja put the machine through the floor, the other moles exploding out of the frame.
Richie and Cuppy felt themselves sweat. "Uh, moving on."
They discreetly made their way to the next game, whistling the tune of alibis. Richie beat Cuppy in air hockey, prompting the puppeteer to swap places with his bro, swiftly and carefully weaving himself over in the disguise string to assume Cuppy's form. The switch-a-roo took place under cover of darkness within a photo booth, where the kids took the opportunity to make stupid faces and poses for some pictures. Cuppet, more dexterous and hyper focused than his organic counterpart, utterly curbstomped Richie, Level 2 or otherwise. Freyja was barred from playing, much to her whining.
"You'll embed the puck in a wall." Richie said.
"Or someone's sternum." Cuppy added cheerfully.
"Don't tempt me." Freyja grumbled.
Surrounding the great slide platform, they each took their blankets and let 'er rip. Richie and Freyja were neck and neck, stomachs lurching with the bumps and falls, laughing, as Cuppy came up from behind and overtook them booth, belly down like a penguin sliding across ice. Cuppy wiped out at the last possible minute, rolling head over heel at the bottom. As he stood and swayed, dizzy, he stumbled into the end of Richie's lane. The thief plowed into him, taking the puppeteer's legs out from under him. Freyja followed suit, sandwiching all of them against the fence.
The drop tower rose with a slow but steady, methodical pace, giving all time to reflect on their mistake. The gear-like sound of clanking metal was like the chimes of a bell signalling the hour of a condemned man's execution. The platform held at the top for a solid twenty seconds. Richie groaned.
Stolen story; please report.
"You sadistic fuck." he grit his teeth at the ride.
"What an idyllic view." Cuppy whistled, looking around the indoor park happily.
Freyja's wolf claws poked out of her straining, white knuckle grip fingers, their lupine points digging into the padded surface of the chest bar.
Churros, stay where you are. Freyja gulped.
The platform lilted - and then did nothing.
Richie, who had cringed and closed his eyes, opened them again. "Huh? Is it st-"
- The ride dropped, and Richie screamed like a girl. Cuppy cackled maniacally the whole way down.
"Again, again!" the moppet insisted. Freyja's hair was frizzed up, as it would be again on the multitude of titanic, wild roller coasters.
"Far out." she said, deadpan, her eyes seemingly stapled wide open and at odds with her otherwise blank face.
Bumper cars were an exercise in pissing each other off.
"Use your turn signal!" Richie flipped off some eight year old.
"What turn signal?" Freyja scratched her head.
She deftly turned out of the way as Cuppy barreled through, trying to ram her, instead rebounding off of the barrier of the motorized battlefield, and spinning wildly. Richie got caught in a traffic jam, wedged between two other cars, providing his exposed and incapacitated rear for Freyja to end.
She floored it.
"Ack!" Richie lurched. "Stop fucking my ass!"
Cuppy tossed a ping pong ball, and the goldfish won a goldfish. "Hi!" he waved to the hapless prisoner of war.
"Cup, over here!" Frey waved him over to the balloon darts.
"Here, hold this for me." Cuppy jammed the goldfish bowl into Richie's arms. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
The goldfish pooped.
After making a very inconvenient backtrack to house Cuppy's new pet in their hotel room for now, Richie met back with the group to hit the shooting gallery. The backdrop took the form of a spooky ghost town beneath a dusky sky, intermittently lit with flashes of lightning. The crooked doors of a dusty old saloon swung open, and the gaunt face of a haggard and aged prospector popped out. Richie nailed him between the eyes, dead center.
"I didn't know you were such a good shot." Freyja remarked.
"I didn't either." Richie scratched his head. His gun safety, as well as that of the carnival booth's itself, was lacking though. He carelessly let his peacekeeper flop to the side in his offhand as he marveled about his unexpected shooting prowess, and a pellet hit Freyja in the forehead.
"Motherfuck!" Freyja clutched her head.
"Oops. Sorry." Richie said awkwardly. In his bumbling attempt to check on Freyja, he dropped the gun and shot Cuppy in the ass. The moppet went straight up six feet from a standing position.
"You're blacklisted!" Freyja bit Richie's face.
The carnival vendor watched all of this passively, but with a distinct undercurrent of fear.
"Your, uh, your prize, sir?" he gestured to the rack of stuffed animals and toys.
Richie selected a cutesy doll in a ruffled pink dress and gave it to Freyja.
"Why?" Freyja turned her nose down at the girly trinket.
"Because you'll hate it." Richie said.
"I do." Freyja narrowed her eyes.
"Also, because I need cover." Richie thought of Chikita, who in his mind appeared as a fanged succubus with leathery bat wings and evil eyes.
"Why can't I have the doll?" Cuppy pouted.
"You already have one." Richie said.
Offended wooden noises came out of Cuppy's backpack.
They heard some aggravated cursing from deeper within the arcade, and congregated around a group of drunken twenty-somethings surrounding a large square machine with a padded 1×1 padded surface below a score bar. The electronic display read 270 points. Cuppy circled the machine, pushing in between the cologne-soaked bros. He scanned a reference chart plastered to the side of the game, a vertical bar with ascending numbers, each range correlating to a rank. 10,000 points upward was supposed to be akin to the top dogs of heavyweight sluggers.
"It's a punch measuring machine." Richie said. "They use shit like this to gauge fighters' strength during training, and between fights."
"Do you pipsqueaks mind?" some guy with gelled blond spikes and a high school football jersey puffed out his chest.
Freyja smirked. "As a matter of fact, we do. I'll bet you three hundred bucks the pippest of squeaks," Freyja picked Cuppy up by the hood, his body creaking like a sign in the wind as he swayed, "can outpunch your best guy."
The flock of barhoppers practically cackled. "If you wanted to get robbed, you could always take a midnight stroll down the wrong alley."
Freyja's smile turned dark and knowing. "I have."
"You're on. Hey Skylar!" they summoned their swollest unit.
A beefy frat boy with a mullet ambled over from the treacherous prize grab machine, grumbling at the claw having dropped the plush cat at the last second.
"What up?" he asked.
"Give that punch clocker the hardest haymaker you've got." his buddy pointed.
As Skylar took his stance, the others fanned out in a circle with rapt attention, giddy, their beers sloshing. Skylar revved up his best and nailed the punch pad with an exerted grunt. The numbers flickered.
4,000.
"We'll take our winnings now." one of the bros said.
"Cuppy hasn't even punched yet." Freyja thumbed at the moppet.
"Don't hold back." Richie told him.
Cuppy took up the position, standing on his step stool to reach the pad. He rotated his shoulder cuffs and cracked out his neck. "Here goes."
His strings disabled the processing centers for pain and fatigue, and unlatched the natural limiters on muscle capacity. Cuppy's bicep swelled and his veins popped up along his arm.
"Presto!" he let 'er rip.
"Huh?" the dudes gasped.
5,620.
Richie smirked. "We'll take our winnings now."
"Hold on!" Skylar said. He punched the machine with all he had.
4,010.
"No way…" they grumbled.
"My turn." Richie grinned. He practically buried his fist in the punch pad.
9,476.
The frat boy's mouths gaped wide open.
Freyja stepped up to bat. "They saved the best for last." Freyja cracked her knuckles. Richie pulled her aside and whispered in her ear. "You hold back."
Freyja shrugged.
She wound up, took a deep stance, and jabbed the punch pad.
11,871. A small scorch mark was left in the fabric of the pad.
"You- you fucking punks!" one of the bro-bois said. "You cheated somehow!"
Richie scratched his head. "How, exactly? Don't be sore losers, fork it over."
Freyja grinned. "Or do you want to try to duck a trio of heavy hitters who are unequivocally outside your weight class?"
"Little shits!" Skylar threw a punch.
Richie caught the fist in his palm, stopping it dead in its tracks. His fingers closed over Skylar's fist, pressing like an iron vice. "It's poor form to table flip." Richie said.
Skylar tried and failed to pull his hand away. He started groaning as Richie squeezed harder. Richie torqued his palm forward, and Skylar's wrist began creaking. The frat boy fell onto one knee, grabbing his arm and trying to wrench it free of Richie's clutch.
"Appearances can be deceiving." Richie smiled.
He let go, and Skylar jerked his hand back, rotating his wrist and splaying out his fingers. His knuckles were bruised. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped down. This couldn't be happening. It was impossible. He lunged to his feet, roaring, and flashed a switchblade toward Richie. Freyja flashed between them, shoved Richie out of the way, and pivoted around the enraged brute. She spun and planted her heel in the punch machine pad, right in front of Skylar's face.
16,660.
He looked at the readout, sweating.
The swol bois surrendered their cash and bounced.
-
Meanwhile, a similar moment of truth was underway in Leon's private gym room. The hotelier he was promoting the show in concert with had his doubts about the Valentine Family Circus's guest performer.
"Look champ, I just don't see it. This pudgy nip in the underwear is hardly fodder for a pretty boy who matches blows with a goddamn lion." the man said.
"Why don't we let actions speak louder than covers?" Leon said.
"Not how that saying works." the man scratched his head.
In the room was another punched machine like the one in the carnival, properly calibrated and waiting for a demonstration. The Great Eruption rose up in a vertical splits, one massive leg pointed skyward, then stomped down, planting himself. He planted his other leg in turn, and squared deep, his knuckles on the ground, head bowed. He looked up and held his gaze on the pad. Flashbacks of a thousand days spent palming ironwood trees till the bark was worn down to nothing and the trunks were dented flowed through his mind. He rose and chambered an arm. A massive bicep swelled, and Leon could briefly see, from the side, the outline of a six pack peeking out under the rolls of fat.
For just a moment, the hotelier felt nervous, like he was in the presence of a bear that had just risen from hibernation.
"OSU!" Dai Funka thrust his palm into the pad.
There was a light tap.
"Huh?" the hotelier slowly walked up to the machine, feeling himself relax again.
The readout was a mere score of 5.
"What was that supposed to be?" he chuckled. Must have been his imagination.
Leon smirked, and pointed behind the punch gauge. The hotelier walked behind the device and gaped.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!?"
The wall a dozen feet behind the punch measure machine was cratered in, as if it had been hit by a wrecking ball. It was as though the shock generated by the sumo wrestler's palm thrust was a high caliber round that exploded to shrapnel on its way out, leaving a far greater exit wound than entry wound. Even without following the matches, a casual observer could tell who had wrestled Dai Funka by the deep, blossoming bruises.
"WHO'S GONNA PAY FOR THAT?!?" the hotelier shrieked.
Leon shrugged. "Not my problem. I trust your misgivings are put to bed. Also,"
He grabbed the hotelier by the collar and lifted him. "Insult my friends or my artistic choices again at your own peril."
The man gulped and nodded, and Leon dropped him.
"Freaks." he grumbled to himself once he was a safe distance from the both of them.
-
Richie scratched his head. The three of them stood in the hallway outside the door to their suite. "I didn't think the shades would be able to follow us some place like this." he said.
"He got fat on Cuppy's bad dream juice, from the sound of it." Freyja lightly ground her knuckles into the top of Cuppy's head. "Like sticking a straw in a coconut."
Richie shuddered. "Fucking parasites."
Cuppy looked up at the door. "So what do you guys want to do? Seems a shame to let the room go to waste."
"You created swap dolls in advance, anticipating something might sucker punch us. I don't suppose you replaced those dolls before we came back, did you?" Richie asked.
Cuppy loaded, and then replied. "Oh, no, I didn't. That would have been a good idea."
Freyja pinched the bridge of her nose. "Goddammit, Cuppy."
Richie shrugged. "I was thinking about taking a walk back to the complex and checking on Snaggles anyway. Whip up some effigies of us, I'll take 'em back with me."
"And if more shades appear?" Freyja asked.
"We know to be wary of them this time. This room isn't warded like the apartment is, so we just let our guard down. Cuppet doesn't sleep, put him on sentry duty." Richie said.
Cuppy pricked four fingers with a sewing needle, and wound blood drops into the likenesses of himself, his bro, Richie, and Freyja. Richie sashed the dolls to his waist and pulled his scarf snug.
"Be careful." Freyja cautioned. "And remember, your show with the battle pudding is tomorrow night. Don't let your sugar mama's ticket go to waste." she nudged Richie.
"Ya huh." Richie rolled his eyes, a small grin indicating his ill-concealed excitement. It was pretty cool of Holly to set everything up for them like this.
"Alright, we'll meet back by tomorrow." Freyja waved Richie off.
"Toodles!" Cuppy said.
The door closed, parting them. Freyja had kept it to herself, but she had a feeling Richie wasn't heading back just for a social visit. He was the only one of the three of them not to break into the Backyards on command yet, Freyja's disastrous showing notwithstanding. Somehow, calling him on it felt like it would just further wound his pride.
Richie felt oddly lonely on the elevator ride down. The clank and whirring of the cables and machinery was a hypnotic drone. On the walk back home, the streets were desolate, the wind cold. Dead leaves blew across the pavement, whispering like spies. Richie drew his jacket tighter and buried his hands deep in his pockets.
His dragons went stiff, and began to sniff the air. For just a moment, they glowed azure.
"Huh?" Richie looked at his sleeves. "What's up?"
Watching from the mouth of an alley at Richie's back, Luchesi dragged his claws across the stone, like a cat sharpening their claws. The tumorous swells of flesh on the backs of his shoulders twisted and groaned, baying for blood.
"I know," Luchesi said. "You want revenge on him too, don't you?" he purred to his own body. The traumatic memory of the hobo's beatdown flashed through Luchesi's memory in first person perspective. Though Luchesi had done the deed of delivering the finishing blow, Richie had left the man for dead. Oh, the sweet irony, how that man had committed no crime for which he fell to fate's blades! Yes, Crocus had been watching Richie for some time, feigning surprise when the boy slipped into the catacombs within the walls of the apartment, and brushed with that overgrown pale reptile. Those who held aptitude for exploration of the Backyards were being gathered like dew drops upon a leaf.
Luchesi's body was wracked with a wave of pain that felt like the marrow within his bones had frozen solid and stabbed icicles through him from within. He clutched his chest and fell over, vomiting black rain. Already, his stock of energy taken from the feast in his yard was depleted, and his body threatening to degenerate. He didn't have the correct resources to take on the runic brat just yet. Even through the crippling pain though, he licked his lips.
We could have been friends, Richie. You could have lived like a king in my Backyards. Idiot, trying to become some kind of hero? For what? This filthy city that rejected you? No good deed goes unpunished, pretty little dragon.
He slipped away into a wandering corridor.
Richie's dragons faded their glow.
"What happened? Did a corridor show up on your radar?"
The dragons hesitated. It is nothing, Richie.