Making of a Mechromancer

[Gnomezilla]

The witchling handler looked back and forth between the older child who'd thought she'd hidden herself well among the rolling stock and the younger one in mechanic's overalls walking alongside the hunter. After several seconds the handler cleared her throat and muttered something to Hoffman about a misunderstanding. The construct handler didn't say anything--she was on duty, after all, and it was his duty to speak not hers--but 'told you so' flashed across her expression. But they were at the scene now, and the handler pressed them into service regardless before hurrying off to report the train's outbreak of magic to her superiors.

The austringer's raptor passed over the rolling stock, making note of the avenues of escape. Witchling stalkers crept around the shacks of the train yards and half-unloaded cars, swifter and smaller than was typical for the breed, along with the hunter and the younger child, blocking all paths except for the one broad enough to accommodate a collared catch from a previous train, the Guild's pet abomination, and Hoffman his handler.

Well. All visible, human paths.

Lilith let Nekima and the mature nephilim fly on ahead. Better to keep pace with Barbaros and to keep him happy. One treacherous lieutenant on the field was quite enough to manage, though she could be managed just as easily as letting her be the first of the nephilim to break from cover and assault the vermin.

She couldn't suppress a grin as Hoffman looked away from the surprise of Nekima, to the older child and then to the younger one as no doppelganger presented itself. Lilith raised her eyes to Ryle's blank mask, and sought to draw him on, but energies from the collared catch swelled outward like heat, breaking eye contact. She frowned. All the same, the heat did not reach very far. Not quite far enough to cloak the austringer, for one.

As the perpetual enemies of Malifaux squabbled, a witchling stalker slipped under the upraised knife of a shaman, grabbing hold of the arm of the older girl, and pulling her out from under the falling blade. She stumbled after him, only less puzzled about why his grasp was green than why they were fighting over her in the first place. "Who--" she began, but he forestalled her with a wink and a whisper of "Francois"....

[We didn't have enough witchling stalker models and substituted with bayou gremlins and moon shinobi. Later in week one, a different Child encounter did not have a Francois LaCroix, and proxied him with a witchling stalker. Clearly, gremlins had been raiding more closets than just Perdita Ortega's these days.

Series 2 of the battle narratives: The Constructs' Apprentice

Series 3 of the battle narratives: Making of a Mechromancer]

[Gnomezilla]

She wasn't sure the hunt was a success. One of them had only yielded up a handkerchief, and that only once the Widow Weaver had drummed her...fingers, she guessed, although they were mostly claw...on a particular part of the construct half of his body, and it had rung hollow. She shut the hatch again, and held the fabric up to her face for a closer look: white cotton, soft with use but not worn thin, with the scent of being dried in the sun still detectable under the stronger odor of a light anti-corrosive oil from the 'pocket'. This the Widow laid over tiny Teddy's mangled face, and handed her needles around which she had wound black and red yarn, for repairing his nose and eyes.

The next one had been half-clothed only. His trousers were cut from very strong and stiff duckcloth, and it took a few minutes to unbuckle all the straps girdling them around the waist and one leg. She looked at the ground-in stains and sighed, then turned her attention to the knitted stocking (was that silk? it wasn't scratchy like wool and it wasn't sweaty like cotton) which had cushioned the leg underneath the straps. Here the Widow stopped her, and drew her back to the stained canvas. They were, at least, very tall clothes and the stains were not fresh soil, and yielded enough fabric to recover the entire tiny Teddy in fabric which would not shred easily. All the same, she shook her head, no.

"It's not...I don't know...I want a soft fluffy teddy...and a clean one, too..."

The Widow urged her toward the last body. This one had even more straps to unbuckle, but at last she had plenty of fabric. As she peeled off pieces of clothing, she handed them up to the Widow, who ripped open seams and separated their various fabrics into piles. Once this one was stripped down to knitted underwear from neck to knee (more cushioning for the straps, she guessed), she looked back at the piles. There were starched cuffs and collar with ear and snout and paw shapes cut from the curve of them, less starched fine cotton cut and overlaid on the duckcloth pieces to hide the stains. The tie and pocket square, adorned with a subtle woven pattern of cross-hatches, were cut just wide enough to wrap around the starched cottons to make the ears and paws and Teddy tummy shine. Now the Widow stacked the thin layers of wool suiting six and eight plies high, and pleated them between her numerous fingers, and nodded toward the strong cotton thread already in the needle and ready for repairs.

The child sewed, the Widow pleated, the tiny Teddy took shape again in shirt cotton and tie silk, the Widow continued to pleat, and the child sewed down pleats all over the cotton until the Teddy looked as though it had been wrapped in woolen cords, like a voodoo doll. At last, once the tiny Teddy was puffy with wool, the Widow reached down with her claws, and slashed open the cords along their length. She cut down to the cotton, and the severed ends of multicolored woolen threads sprang free and fanned out from the lines of stitching between the pleats, and just as easy as that the tiny Teddy was fluffy again with chenille.

She smiled, and unwound the yarns from around their respective needles. Teddy needed a new smile too.

[Gnomezilla]

[I failed to contest the Child in the third scenario. Have some exposition instead.]

Midnight hadn't even come before Leveticus woke again and left his bed. If there was one thing which was wasted on the young, he thought as he passed another room where light and gossip leaked through the cracks in the door, it was the ability to sleep through the night.

On his way back, he had the time to spare to stop and overhear. The tone of their chatter had changed.

"You're sure he's not going to come in here?"

"Yes. I'm sure." That was Alyce, aggravated. "You just had to share a room, so no, he will not come in here. He gets up in the middle of the night every night and yes he looks in but no, now that you're here, he will not come in here!"

For some seconds he listened to nothing but the fearful gasps of the child, then heard a squeak of metal, a heavy slap, and a thud as one of them fell. He started on his way again, good leg first, before he could overhear anything else.

He'd gotten the idea from Hoffman, of all people. Leveticus had leaned on his contacts, and they had pressed the issue with theirs, and the loan which he needed had been approved. But Hoffman was not a trusting soul when it came to Ryle, and so he had to appear at the rendevous himself. Leveticus might have taken offense, but then, what was a little pride when the cost of the loan was otherwise so cheap? So he brought Rusty Alyce to the rendevous for her education, and had been surprised when Hoffman brought along not only Ryle but a child of Malifaux kitted out with mechanic's tools.

Leveticus looked them all over. At last he remarked, "Congratulations."

Hoffman bristled. The child quivered with fear, but nonetheless placed herself between Ryle and Leveticus. It was left to Alyce to snap, "For what?!"

"Use your eyes," he muttered.

He watched her glare, but then focus her stare at each of them in turn. It took her a few passes but she put them in order: Ryle, then the child, then back to Ryle, Hoffman, Ryle again, the child. Ryle, that blot upon the natural entropy of the world, now on a different part of the path all life and matter traveled as it disintegrated. The child, further along that path than a child ought to be, especially one frozen in life by Malifaux's baleful airs. Hoffman, unknowing, unaltered, not the source of the changes.

Alyce sniffed. "So? Do those two have to stay together, or what?"

He'd have to praise her for that. Later. Cautiously. Not only was it a good question, he didn't yet know the answer.

The answer, it transpired, was 'no', but the seed of the idea had been planted. The human children of Malifaux had some connection to the fundamental laws of entropy that older beings did not. Not even Neverborn failed to change as they aged. It was worth investigation.

And so, when they had uncovered the strayed orphan, and one with some natural gift for constructs at that, it had been another step in one of his plans to keep her under observation for a few weeks--until Malifaux worked its will upon her and she became one of the lost, or Rusty Alyce cut her down for 'walking into the line of fire', or she yielded the raw material of a waif, or best yet manifested some new hold upon the path of entropy. Whatever might happen, she could be useful.

[Gnomezilla]

[More exposition, not a battle narrative.]

Matters had been tense between Hoffman and the small apprentice since he and Ryle had returned from the landship. It was his duty, as an adult, to shield children from the horrible revelations of life. All the same, Hoffman resented it.

He'd come down to the private workshop, unable to break the habit of years, and found her halfway up a ladder, tracing her fingers along Ryle's new scars and copying them down onto the back of one of her battle drawings, prattling to him all the while. "What's this one? It's upside down I think. Why didn't Mr. Hoffman work on these in here? It's dirty outside. You might've gotten sick. You came back dirty too. I don't like whoever borrowed you. He didn't take good care of you."

Hoffman cleared his throat. "She."

"Ok, she didn't take--" The child realized Hoffman was there, squeaked, and jumped down to the ground, scattering papers and pencil.

"No," he echoed, "she did not take good care of him at all. Which leads me to ask what you thought you were doing to Ryle, just now."

She looked at her shoes. "Um. I was trying to read him?"

Hoffman had been trying to do the same, unraveling Anna's handiwork. However, he had only been the lowest degree of initiate, and that only because Ryle privately had inducted him into the secret society. That had ever been Ryle's way. From the time he went away to boarding school, any experience he thought his little brother might have missed out upon, he took care to bring home and share, and never mind the possible pains of sharing forbidden knowledge. Still, that left gaps. A fresh-made initiate, such as Ryle had been at the time, didn't even know the name of the mystic society which he had joined, let alone the meaning of most symbols. Anna must have gone further into the mysteries than either of them.

And here and now, a child of Malifaux could not only continue to lay hands on Ryle with an untroubled heart, but had correctly picked out which symbol, among the few secrets he could decipher, had been written upside-down.

He couldn't hate her for her innocence. But sometimes, he very much wanted to.

"Ryle is not a book to be read, child. And--" he paused and swallowed the first, more damning phrasing, before continuing, "--he is not a toy. Go talk to your doll, if you must. You are not supposed to pretend that constructs are alive."

She looked up, then, but at Ryle not him, and stretched out a hand to his claw. "But I don't mind."

And should Ryle ever reach out again, and take his hand--
--should he ever have Ryle reach out again, and take his hand--
--I don't mind--

He left the private workshop as fast as the walking frame could carry him, with the child looking after him in puzzlement.

[Gnomezilla]

The scrap yard stank. After the rains, water had pooled in upturned curved debris and bred scum and tadpoles before drying up and killing everything within, the paper which padded out cheaply made construct armor had dissolved into mildew, and the shreds of human meat which still clung to artificial limbs had dissolved into a goo so vile even the maggots had given up on it. The indifferent housekeeping of Leveticus and Alyce led to a streak of garbage arcing out from the back door as neither of them bothered to carry the pail out when the contents could simply be flung from the doorway, and the privy hadn't been mucked out in years.

But it was still cleaner than inside. The inquisitive older child cracked a construct shell with a small hammer, turned her head aside to mitigate whatever might burst out from within, and levered it open. Only flies this time, a whirring buzzing cloud of them, which didn't even tangle in her hair as they took flight. She shook the stragglers away and peeked, then stuck her head inside to look further into the construct. Its curvature funneled sounds from further down the yard to her ears.

"Now you give me those taps back." A high, honeyed, twanging voice. "I don't care how many of them you think you can grab," and for a moment steel and gunpowder overlaid the honey, "there will be enough taps on that golem for the entire weddin' party, you hear?"

She popped out of the construct shell and looked around. Nobody else was in sight. Still, she began to wish she hadn't ordered tiny teddy to search a different part of the scrap yard. She picked a set of wire cutters off of her toolbelt and leaned in again. More voices.

"And I have your assurance that your will overrides their owners' allegiances?" This voice was masculine, and betrayed some time spent polishing the diction and learning how to project itself.

"You do." Another masculine voice, its accent the original of what the first voice imitated.

The first voice cleared its throat. "Your assured ally is retreating."

She heard tapping outside the shell, and popped out again with cut wires in hand. A black-enameled construct skittered past on gilded arachnid legs. The child looked past it, and saw a handful of those little green-skinned people (what had Leveticus called them? gremlins?) clustered around a heap of rusting pipes, cutting off spigots and loading them into the giant wooden paws of a creature built from barrels. One gremlin kept dipping his hand into the upturned palms, but withdrawing it again with extra spigots which then disappeared into the sack slung over his shoulder. He caught the child staring and slid away from the group.

The child heard a whip crack, and--

"That was unnecessary." The second voice was cold with anger, now.

--a machine gun swung out from behind another scrap heap, and the body which hefted it followed. She shuddered. Leveticus' little abominations were bad, Rusty Alyce's were worse (the child hadn't yet caught her making one which wasn't a girl-child twisted and riveted down onto the machinery), but the one which they had brought home several nights ago loomed over them all. It lacked the mindless hostility of the small skittering ones, true, but this one in the dead of night had butted repeatedly into any wall which faced the heart of the city, and that hint of volition within it had been worse.

The tip of the whip flicked out of concealment also, as did the man wielding it. He was a whip himself, tightly wound and oiled, and the child wasn't surprised that his was the first, polished voice. "The Guild had your assurance that it held your," he laid the faintest stress on 'your' and turned it plural, "allegiance. Despite that, constructs are fleeing from gremlins. And despite that, you are accepting gifts from gremlins."

The child edged sideways until she could see where the second man looked down, to the empty shotglass in his hand. She nodded, once, to herself. It was him, the one who hadn't been much hurt by the grenades the construct had rained down weeks ago, but who had been too stunned to resist when the Widow Weaver ordered her to salvage fabric for tiny teddy's repair. He looked kind of stunned now too, blinking his watering eyes as the lady among the gremlins sashayed over and plucked the shotglass out of his hand.

"How-dee again," she cooed in her honey-sweet voice, tipping hat and haunches. "Why don't we start that over? I am Trixiebelle, and you are?"

The second man didn't answer, but the child remembered now: he was Hoffman. "Master Queeg," said the first.

Trixiebelle gasped. "Well! I may be a happily married woman as of this time next week but I do not hold with that calling-a-man-'master' nonsense!" She turned her rump to Queeg with the attitude of a closing argument. "Now, sugar," she continued, leaning her shoulder on Hoffman's leg, "my fee-yon-say is getting a bit fluttery, y'might say, on account of he's the only human that got invited to the weddin'. Now we came here for taps for the whiskey golem, but I've had a notion. You come along with us and bring that stonkin' great muscle-man over yonder--"

Hoffman's eyes, already unfocused from strong liquor, crossed when he slowly worked out what Trixiebelle meant there.

"--along to the weddin' and help my man settle himself down some. Don't you worry," she giggled conspiratorially, "we do have a heap of bridesmaids!"

The child watched from afar as Hoffman opened his mouth, clamped it shut again and fought down the urge to vomit, heeded the liquor as it whispered advice in his ear, and told Trixiebelle he'd sooner pair off with Master Queeg, would if necessary happily pair off with Ryle, rather than escort a gremlinette. As some sort of mad counterpoint, Ryle at the mention of his name punched Fingers and sent him flying towards where the child watched.

As Fingers cartwheeled past the child knocking debris aside and splashing through puddles of muck, Trixiebelle's slap overshot Hoffman by a centimeter and knocked one of his accompanying constructs clean off of its booted feet. The child skittered away from the argument that was to come, seeking tiny teddy. Only later did she notice that her pockets had grown heavier with the weight of two metal spigots, while the wire she had been clutching and the hammer from her tool belt were gone.

[Gnomezilla]

[More exposition, and the end of the previous battle report.]

Tiny teddy tugged on the child's ribbon. She had altered her overalls to better fit, and decorated them with a little bit of ribbon from the fringes of the Widow Weaver's umbrella, sewn flat on the straps and pocket edges and hems. There was just enough left over to make a belt loop for tiny teddy to grab onto. It wanted to hold hands all day long, but she liked to have both hands free.

It tugged on the loop again, and pointed. She followed its paw and saw, lying flat and stealthy inside the lower shell of another wrecked construct, another younger girl in overalls peering down at them. The porcelain head of a fancy baby doll peeked over her shoulder. They stared at each other for awhile in silence. At last the girl atop the wreck gulped and asked, "Are you hollowed out, cousin?"

The inquisitive child and her teddy kept on looking up. "Am I what?"

The hands which had gripped the broken plating in fear relaxed. "You're ok! C'mon hurry up here!" One hand reached down, with a doll-sized construct claw flopping down after it. The girls held hands, their little constructs held hands, the younger child leaned back and pulled up, and the inquisitive child and her teddy scrambled up and into the empty wreck.

The younger girl snaked a hand over her shoulder and worked a clockwork key on the doll's back by touch. The older watched the doll's arms--one was made of the original porcelain, with springs holding the thumb against the curled fingertips, and the other the construct claw--loosen their grip on her sleeves. She and tiny teddy looked on as the other caught the clockwork dolly before it could drop, pulled it forward, and snuggled it while the crawling motions of its limbs wound down and stopped.

Tiny teddy looked at the inquisitive child, and shook its head, no. She nodded. "Mine's a teddy. He's much too fierce to ride on my back like that." Tiny teddy made itself stand taller. "I'm not your cousin. Why are you so scared? Teddy's not going to hurt you."

The younger one shook her head. "We're street cousins. All the kids on the street are....You're not hollowed out! What're you doing here, this is way too close to the scary scrapyard! Cousins get hollowed out, here! You've got to hide up here, and maybe when it gets dark we can sneak out of here--" The inquisitive child waved her hands downwards to try and stop the torrent but the younger child was having none of it. "--I'm not supposed to be here now but I polished all the constructs and umm the special construct is checked out right now so I don't have to do that maintenance--"

"Will you let me ask???" The older child thumped the construct shell she sat on with her fist, setting off echoes.

"--and I saw you run away from the train and I was supposed to help catch you then so technically I'm still actin' under Guild orders if anybody asks--" The younger child's babble cut off as tiny teddy laid a paw firmly over her mouth.

"What do you mean, the scary scrapyard? What's hollow? These wrecks?" She patted the floor softly this time. "I'm supposed to be salvaging what's left in them, that's why they're hollow. It's ok. Leveticus told me to." Above tiny teddy's paw, the younger child's eyes, already too large to be human, widened even further, and she shivered and hugged the doll tighter. The older child spoke in a soothing tone. "It's not that bad. He's not that bad." The younger child let go of the doll with one hand to grab hold of the older child's hand again, and squeeze it in sympathy and disbelief. "Ok, Alyce is that bad, but she fights with him more than she does with me. And the other things, they're just there. They don't jump out and fight you, most of the time, not even that extra large one."

The doll's construct hand flew up, grabbed tiny teddy's paw, and wrenched it away from the younger child's mouth, although the older child never saw the key being wound. "Did he have a claw like this?" she blurted out as soon as her mouth was freed. "He doesn't belong to you, give him back!"

"How'd you do that?" asked the older child, watching tiny teddy disentangle itself from the clockwork dolly.

The younger child glanced down at the doll squirming in her arms, then quietened and moved a finger up to tentatively touch the construct claw, and leaped up as though she'd been stung by electricity grounding itself. "I've got to go," she exclaimed, and hopped down from the wreck. "Stay up there where it's safe, I'll come back, I'll help you escape," she shouted back over her shoulder, running straight for where the older child had seen the gremlins earlier.

"Don't run away..." the inquisitive child called after her, but her words were lost in the echoes of the scrapyard.

 

It hadn't stopped.

Trixiebelle plucked yet another shotglass out of Hoffman's unresisting fingers and tucked it under the whiskey golem's tap, drawing another shot for herself.

It hadn't stopped!

Even now that he was conscious of his soul slipping loose from his grasp and moving the constructs around him, every one, he couldn't control it. Back at the Guild enclave he could drown himself in paperwork. Flowcharts and blueprints held no emotion. But now he was out here, and though he had a strong tolerance, he was drowning in the Brewmaster's finest, losing his grip on himself, and then who could tell what the constructs--what he would do?

The Brewmaster's staff seemed to split, spin, and coalesce around the flasks tied to its top as the gremlin shuffled closer. Hoffman wanted to retreat, but didn't. Couldn't? Hadn't? Were the other constructs retreating instead? It was hard to tell. Everything was moving, sliding gently to one side, as far as he could see.

"Yer feeling it a bit," stated the old gremlin.

Strange. He was well-spoken, for one of them. "A bit. Yes." That didn't seem adequate for the slow Catherine-wheel spin of the metal around him which probably wasn't happening. Yet.

Under the hood, the Brewmaster might have grinned. "Try a sip of Hollow Marsh," he said, and indicated one of his flasks, "and there won't be nothin' left of you but feeling. Goes and hollows you out, leaves more room for the whispers from the marsh. A delicate tribute to the witch of fate, it is. She blessed the barrel her own self."

"No! No. That will not do." That would be wrong, Hoffman went on, entirely. Then Ryle might move again, and...It occurred to Hoffman that he was arguing with himself, in his head, and he forced his attention outward.

The old gremlin had waited for him. "You'd rather feel solid, then take a slug of Tucket's Everlasting and you'll be one with the land. Or the floor, I ain't fussy. But Mah, she's insisting that 'one with the land' is how I've got to label it." He scuffed the end of his staff on the scrapyard's dirt.

Hoffman tried to see a flaw in this plan. He could not quite reason out why passing out cold in the middle of the scrapyard was a bad idea, but he shook his head no, setting the wrecks whirling even faster. Some of the gremlins spun so fast they seemed to turn into human children.

"It's too early in the day to be wasting good liquor that way, but if it ain't a party until you're puking, how about a Double-Barreled shot? Hits you on the way down and on the way back up again. The LaCroix load up on it a'fore visiting at the Joneses' on account of the unholy mess it all makes."

"No. I want..." No. Talking about what he wanted was the first step down a dangerous road. Nonetheless the Brewmaster had cocked his head to one side and appeared to be listening, and Hoffman was already too intoxicated to stop talking altogether. "I want...I want to be just that drunk that I can't feel anything. Do anything."

The Brewmaster drummed his fingers on the whiskey golem, upturned his eyes, muttered to himself. After a bit he said, "I can't give you both. Pick one."

"Pick what?"

"Feelin', or doin'. You want to stop doin', that'll be the Tucket's Everlasting. But if you just want to stop feelin'...Trixiebelle, that'd be what I cooked up for your fiancé, what we give him every time he gets to sobbin'. Strictly speaking, that's yours, that's my gift to your nuptials, but if you'd see your way clear to gifting the man here a drink that'd be a kindness."

Trixiebelle sighed, and the lifting and falling of her bosom with that heavy sigh would've broken a dozen gremlins' hearts, but she drew from a smaller tap adorned with a crude sketch of a human. The shotglass passed from Trixiebelle to the Brewmaster to Hoffman.

[Gnomezilla]

The child awoke with a pained gasp as Alyce stepped on her midsection. She'd had to sleep on the floor, of course, and it wasn't the first time she'd been woken that way. This time, though, the older girl kept on running without bothering to stomp on tiny teddy as well, and in between gasps for air the child heard someone drumming on the wooden slats outside the shop. Rusty Alyce didn't bother to open a window. She just aimed at the wall and let bullets fly. Holes opened up in one wall, then another, one of the beautiful mindless abominations lost an arm to stray bullets, Leveticus' voice rose in weary complaint from the next room, another beautiful one appeared through the hole in one wall and beckoned with a long rotting finger...

She might have gotten to her feet to help, but instead found herself crawling under the bullet fire from either side, with tiny teddy herding her toward the hole in the second wall.

When she emerged, she found herself face to face with something in a miniature duster and wide-brimmed hat. He touched the brim of that hat, and then extended a tiny hand to help her to her feet. His grip was cold and rigid. A construct!

Before she had time to ponder on that further, tiny teddy clawed its way through the wall and leaped onto the effigy on all fours, knocking it backwards into the scrapyard dust. The child heard a squeak of outrage, and followed that sound back to the younger child and her doll staring at the scuffle. The inquisitive child called out, softly. "...Is that you?"

"Cousin!" whispered the other, breaking eye contact with the effigy, and beaming a smile. "I told you I'd come back! I brought help!" Several tiny constructs swarmed over a nearby wreck and formed a line pointing away from Leveticus' shop. "Lots of help. You're not supposed to remember you saw those, ok?" The older child scampered down the line, and tiny teddy followed, swatting the slowest steam arachnids aside. "You don't have to disassemble them! Just pretend they weren't here." A little beast whose skin flowed like liquefied metal affixed something to a nearby wreck before waving the children on. "We're only supposed to be on Guild business catching you. With Guild constructs, see?"

 

It had been Ramos' idea to use Union constructs for the rescue, whispered down into the younger child's ear as she brought the large arachnids back to him at twilight. But she brought his plan back to Hoffman in deference to his judgment, and he had agreed to it, sort of. What exactly he had said was, "There's another one?" and then stared at her for awhile.

"It's still the first one we were supposed to catch from the train, Mr. Hoffman," she'd reminded him. "My cousin."

"You call them all cousins," he said, after long silent deliberation.

"Yeah. You remember, when me an' Tawnee..." She had scuffed her feet in shame at the memory. "I'm sorry we wanted to steal from you." An explanation for the oddness of his behavior came to her. "Are you sleepin' on your feet again? Like you were then?"

"No, child, I'm only intoxicated," and she had been alarmed to hear Hoffman's little laugh, "That gremlin tricked me. Their liquor lasts, but tomorrow will not be enjoyable." That thought had reminded him to be solemn. "I am not dreaming. The liquor stopped that, at least. That gremlin did not lie. Listen. I will not tell you this again." She had nodded, not understanding. "You called the other girl cousin. And so I...I dreamed this, that you needed to be a cousin to children who don't exist..." He had swallowed, and pretended very hard to be sober. "No. You have no cousins here. I hired you under false pretenses and I ought to have let you go long ago."

She had burst into tears then, in woe and panic, and paid attention to nothing else he said until Hoffman's voice had grown rough in frustration, "Very well. Tonight. We'll rescue her tonight, now, stop making so much noise," he had raised the hand which had just given her an awkward pat on the head and massaged his temples, "the liquor's run its course. Go prepare the constructs, but do it quietly!"

 

Three decaying heads scented the air of the scrapyard, and fixed all their oozing eyesockets on the metal gamin. It padded forward, with the corpse of a guardsman lurching alongside and sometimes sending another pot-shot back towards Rusty Alyce's bedroom.

"Good job!" rang out a female voice too merry for that late hour and that firefight. "She'll be happy to see us, but make sure you keep away from anything clicking or whirring or ticking, alright? Don't touch the constructs or they'll snap at you. Ponto, you're fine, stay. But just in case..." Fingers snapped, and two discarded sharp-edged metal ribbons were snatched up by a zombie which wasn't there moments before.

The rogue necromancy and its gunner stepped past where the metal gamin had been standing moments prior--and the wreck by their side exploded. Shrapnel scattered through the area, and then, caught by Hoffman's thoughts, slowed and landed gently on the gashes that tiny teddy's claws had left upon the various constructs, sealing them. The three-headed beast never stopped until it loomed over Hoffman and bit into the metallic sheen the gamin had laid over the man.

"Hoffman, does this one have orders to jab at me with needles?"

"That's not one of mine. Do what you like."

The younger child peeked out from between the furthest shed and the fence, and snickered. "That gamin can magnetize that little machine and pop it apart! Bet Hoffman won't make it do it though. Do you know what the mechanics call that jerk?" She pointed at Master Queeg as the punk zombie parried with one blade and with the other made the taskmaster dodge until he was disheveled. "They call him wanker-for-short. It's really rude." The younger child sounded quite pleased with the information.

"What is that, what did you call it, what's it doing?" asked the older child, as the gamin lowered its liquid head and churned its legs into a formless blur. It slid forward, sluglike, and rammed itself into the nearest head of the rogue necromancy. The traces of liquid metal left in its mouth from the bites glowed white-hot, and that head screamed.

"It's never done that before. Let me make it do it again!" She gave the metal gamin a hard stare and it reared back for another strike. The older child looked speculatively at tiny teddy. It stared back, and was about to win that contest when it broke its stare and growled at the roof of the shed.

Both girls looked up to find a boy-child staring down at them, daggers in hand. "I'm s'posed to rescue you," he mumbled through a cloth tucked around his face, "but weren't s'posed to be but one."

The younger child bristled. "You're not doing the rescuing, I am! How'd you get up there?"

He jabbed a dagger sideways to point at the wild-haired lady approaching the grown men, nonchalant as though there weren't gunshots and curses and constructs colliding all around her. "I can't help Alyce," she said to Hoffman, "she won't be helped, but if you think I am going to turn around and walk away from any of the others, you are going to be very, very disappointed. She's leaving, with me."

"If I think..." Hoffman began, and realized the implication, and blanched ever paler than hangover. "I've no part of that!"

Molly clucked her tongue. More crooligans appeared from the wrecks. "Sorry, don't believe you. Not when you're keeping company with this rat, late at night, here." She flicked her eyes sideways to Master Queeg as Hoffman fumbled for the right words to exonerate himself, and couldn't find them in time. "Get them both," she told the rogue necromancy, and it roared from its two uninjured mouths.

"C'mon," the boy repeated, "we've got to go, both of you--"

A toolkit skittered around the scrap heap in response to Hoffman, ticking. "Down!" squealed the younger girl, and the tiny teddy leapt in front of the older as the toolkit detonated itself.

"--You better be the right one, 'cuz we're goin'!" shouted the boy through the pain in his ears, grabbing the only girl still conscious by the wrist and pulling her along as the teddy mauled his ankles. Another boy vaulted over the debris with a crude spear and ran alongside, drawing off tiny teddy's fury, and then Molly herself reached out to lend a hand and an adult's running speed.

"Hi, I'm Molly," she introduced herself while yet another crooligan joined the pack and one of the others crumbled to dust. "Sorry I took so long! I was racking my brains trying to think of a way to get you out of here without anyone noticing," and behind them the rogue necromancy collapsed alongside the unconscious men as steam arachnids swarmed over it, "until I had a brainwave--why do I care about being secret about it? Everyone knows he's a creep. I'll probably get a medal, I mean, not that I'm in it for the medals," the rotten belle staggered away from the destroyed wall, parasol and prettiness riddled with bullet holes, "what I mean is, clearly whoever gets you out of here is in the right and not even the Guild could take offense at it.

"There's an idea! Once we get out of here can I get an interview?" Either she was used to talking nonstop while running or she didn't need to breathe at all, this lady. "Nellie's always on everyone's case about how if we see good human interest pieces we need to jump on it. Guild was involved back there, so all I have to do is write myself out of it, and sold! Getting the credit for this would be great, but scrip in hand would also be nice...."

[Gnomezilla]

Alyce's arm smashed through the weakened wall and snatched at the rotten belle's finery, tearing off a handful of lace from the retreating undead. "Yeah, that's what you get," she shouted after it, shredding the lace between iron fingers, "next time try knocking on the actual door! In the daytime!"

Leveticus opened up said door and stared out at the battle, the fallen bodies, the constructs and crooligans twitching their last. "Alyce. Was it strictly necessary to bypass the window? This was needlessly destructive, and also noisy."

"It's not like you were sleeping," she snapped, "it's past midnight."

But he had crept quietly out the door regardless. "Tell me," he said, "whether you see that komainu-clawed creature anywhere among the wrecks?"

Rusty Alyce looked, and saw Leveticus turning over one of the destroyed constructs with his stick. He was going out there, to look. Out, into the middle of a firefight, to look. To look for that brat! Would he put himself on the firing line for her?!?!? Would he, hell!

He heard the doubled squeak of her thumb and trigger-finger flexing, and hastened for the shelter of the nearest pile of scrap, flushing a crooligan out of the pile. Rusty Alyce's first bullet found that undead child, and a second bullet, and a third and fourth. She didn't stop there. Anything remotely child-shaped in that yard received a full measure of bullets. Crooligans collapsed in silence, the brutal effigy's hat got blown off, Molly herself screamed as Alyce shot her hair, and the hand in Molly's slackened in its grip and pulled heavily away--the inquisitive child's knees had buckled under her as three of Rusty Alyce's shots punctured her body....

[Gnomezilla]

Time broke and spun, for the child. Molly screamed, one hand flying up to her head, the hand holding hers slackening in shock. Pain. Stumbling. Darkness.

Weight on her chest, choking her. Tiny teddy on her chest, on all fours, growling like a chained dog. That hateful voice, triumphant. "So you found it. So grab it and let's go."

"Don't be so hasty, Alyce. I'm not yet done with her." Tiny teddy hopping aside, unweighted chest rising, sucking in air, exploding pain, bright red blood spattering Leveticus' face and hands as he leaned down. Darkness.

Whirring. Clicking. Beats of her heart, beats of something else. Two rhythms, quarreling, fighting one another for control of her body.

Alyce waving something grayish-white under her nose. "Want some 'cookies'?" Mechanical rhythm pulling in air, lungs' rhythm stuttering, choking, sneezing. "Just kidding, it's pepper! Ow!" Sneezing, exploding pain, more blood. "Ha! That clot hit the ceiling! That's going to stick! Ow! Let go of my leg, you miserable teddy!" Darkness.

Her arm flopping above her chest as Leveticus guided it through a sleeve of fine yellow fabric. Tiny teddy sitting on her tummy, watching, tapping its claws against her chest. The sound was wrong. Tap, tap, tap went metal on metal. Darkness.

[Gnomezilla]

Skinless fingers touched her temples. They were neither as cold nor hard as the metal ones which had rested there before, all the other times. The child's eyelids slid slowly open.

The Widow Weaver inclined her many-eyed head in a polite greeting, and helped to turn the child's head so that she could see. Leveticus sprawled back in an armchair, struck down with sleep. Rusty Alyce was not to be seen but her snores rose from the foot of the chair. The Widow resettled her head on the pillow, and the child understood: their slumber was unnatural and would not break until the Widow willed it.

Her tongue lay heavy in her mouth as her body on the bed. She wanted to ask: am I asleep, too?

No. I only laid sleep upon them. You were not sleeping.

But...I wasn't awake. How could they be talking, the inquisitive child asked herself. The Widow's mouth-parts were also unmoving.

I meant to drink your dreams and your woes. I was thirsty and your cup was full.

Those gentle fingers tilted the cup of her skull forward and the child felt all the memories of what had happened to her since she had crossed into Malifaux liquefy and pool behind her eyes. It felt like wanting to cry.

She did not.

But you do not dream about it, the Widow went on. I can hear your thoughts, but I cannot drink them away. I am so thirsty, and you'll feel better once you are freed of them. Let them go. Dream.

She didn't want to be cruel to the Widow Weaver, who had been so kind to her: I would if I could! I'd share everything. But I can't dream any more. Not since I was shot. Not since Leveticus did this to me. I didn't dream anything. It all really happened.

Drowning weight returned to her chest. The tiny teddy crouched there, now, holding the incisions closed as her lungs overrode the mechanical rhythm which helped her breathe. He lifted up his fluffy snout and nudged the Widow Weaver in fond greeting, but his claws sunk into the child's chest as her quick gasping breaths nearly threw him off.

I can't sleep and I can't dream. It all really happened. It did--

Am I dreaming now?

The Widow Weaver's fingers tipped her head forward again but there was no emotion to drink. The child recited questions, gasping for air as her flesh fought against the machinery in her chest, but there was no panic in her voice to match the flailing of her body.

Am I riveted down on a shell of metal? Am I biting your ankle? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, you were nice to me. Turn me around so I can bite Alyce instead. She isn't nice like you are. Am I walking into the wall, over and over again, trying to go somewhere I don't know about any more? I don't want to forget everything like that and still walk around. Leveticus says I have to learn everything and forget nothing or there will only be one thing I am good for. Am I one of the beautiful ones? Am I hollow?--

[Gnomezilla]

[Epilogues.]

In the offices of the Malifaux Tattler, Nellie Cochrane hovered over Molly's article with a pen. Molly smiled inwardly as Nellie found the first of the misspellings seeded into the story and corrected it. This was not her first encounter with an editor.

"We'll cut the story off here--" Nellie slashed red ink between two paragraphs, "--just as the children leap in, opposition, rivalry, suspense, fancy flourishes around 'To Be Concluded in Tomorrow's Issue'. The thrilling rescue comes to its dramatic close! We'll fill today's dead space with stock art of the constructs, and Penny," her pen flitted back to the description of the constructs' daisy chain and crossed out some adjectives, "get a packet of stock art for yourself, for reference. We don't manufacture 'spider-legged' machines, ever. That's all Union."

Some days Molly was "Polly", some days "Penny". Molly minded it less than the other reporters did. Neither one was true, after all. "And if the circulation spikes enough on day two, I want a follow-up interview with--wait a minute..." It didn't annoy nearly as much as Nellie being such a newcomer to Malifaux City that--

Molly stopped ranting to herself when Nellie swiveled in her seat and unlocked a file cabinet which was not the cabinet of stock art Molly had thought she'd reach for. "...You can get an interview?" Nellie went on to say. "You won't just get brickwalled with 'no comment, Miss Cochrane'?"

There was a trick you could do with looking up from under raised eyebrows, lowered eyelashes and lowered chin that was as good as 'yes' without actually saying anything. And thank goodness, Nellie was at least enough of a journalist to take that hint. She pantomimed with broad gestures, but pantomime she did, dropping the sealed sheaf of papers on Molly's side of the desk before leaving the office while shouting for coffee.

*

Trixiebelle leaned on the whiskey golem's arm and sobbed into her crossed arms. "GONE! He's...he's up and left me and..." The rest was lost in tears and the clanging of a ring ripped from a green finger and slammed down upon the barrels. One of the Brewmaster's disciples hurried forward with a foaming mug and eased her fingers around its handle. "Fer me?" she sniffled reflexively, but took only a choked, sobbing sip.

The Brewmaster, standing apart from the scene, waited. He had been pretty sure the liquor would suppress her feelings as well as a human's, but there was a question of dosage, with Trixiebelle's smaller body mass. He set a sharp elbow into his apprentice's side. "Watch 'em and count the sips," he barked, "you'll know when to stop."

Wesley counted. Trixiebelle sipped some more, then blew her nose on the face mask the moon shinobi ripped off and hastily offered, then took a healthy gulp and honked again. This time, no help was proffered and Trixiebelle wrinkled up her nose as if wondering what had happened to her inborn charms. "Seven mouthfuls," Wesley reported, and his mentor nodded to himself. Trixiebelle's renowned alcohol tolerance had split the difference. All the same, when it came time to serve this to his fellow gremlins, he'd be using smaller shotglasses.

*

Yes, the liquor had dampened his innate talents. He found it easier to think, without the fear of the constructs displaying his thoughts for all to see. Everything, Hoffman thought, was quite, quite clear. That, or he had been quite, quite drunk. But with the clarity of intoxication he had examined some delicate moral problems, and come to solutions.

Take the problem of that child apprenticed to the workshop. She was a child, and could be forgiven for almost a familial level of tenderness with the constructs. What was the difference between a construct and a child's doll? Only a matter of degree. But she was no relation of his and anything more than an apprentice's awe of a master should never have been allowed. He flinched from the memory of Molly's words, but her misunderstanding was itself understandable.

Furthermore, if she was so tender and loving towards a...corpse...was she a young Resurrectionist?

The knock echoed on the door of his private workstation, and he stilled his shaking hands before ordering the mechanical attendant to open it and go forth into the workshop. He stayed back himself, exchanging pleasantries about this appointment with the man in the duster. They had sent one of the less ravaged ones. A small mercy.

The mechanical attendant returned with the constructs' apprentice trailing along after it, a cleaning rag clutched in both her hands and dripping suds on the floor. "That's unsafe," Hoffman chided her, "but I will have another mechanic mop it up. I have new orders for you. You will be assisting another branch of the Guild, under my authority. You are to serve with the death marshals for awhile, after you undergo their questioning."

She looked up at the man in the duster, wringing her hands together in distress and squeezing yet more soapy water onto the floor.

"Just one quick test, and then we can go," said the stranger. He knelt to her eye level and held up his index finger. "Look at the point of my finger." The recruiter concentrated, and a small balefire flame burst from his fingertip.

Hoffman averted his eyes from the recruiter. He only watched the child's reaction.

[End Making of a Mechromancer.

Series 4 of the battle narratives: Chasing Lazarus]