>> The Princess And The Cat

  Smoke pours down the frosted glass of the balconies above, and I can't even tell if it's real. The machines crowding in around me as enormous mechanical hands grope the paths and cracks between them.

  The shattered head of 'Mister Tickles' rotating on its stump.

  Burning. Jerking. Twitching. Yet 'alive'.

  And unseeing.

  I hope.

  Massive gloves curl around the tops of the machines. Its fingers slithering to snare me. For the place where last I stood.

  I hop a wall of cables. Soundless, and shadowy.

  Sliding away from those creeping, silent, hands to flit away through metal halls.

  But what now?

  Find my team? Kill Princess? Kill the Clown?

  I check my battered SMG, and my battered self, as the thing stomps past. Heavy, and stumbling. Its happy waistcoat flexing open - a hideous, vertical, mouth filled with spikes.

  No time to get fancy.

  Quick as I dare, I curve a padding arc around the back of the demonic machine. Polybius flickering in fits atop my gun as I hunt for a signal amid the metal.

  Suddenly, it solidifies. An eternal eye staring into my soul.

  "Can't talk." I hiss. "Need options."

  It vanishes as two arrows appear on the hologram display.

  One, green, pointed toward my crew. One, red, toward the clown - a dataJack symbol hovering above it.

  I stop. I grin.

  Why, yes, I would like my own giant murder-bot. How did you know?

  Hell it might just save my crew, remove a threat, and scupper Princess all in one go.

  But what if they need me now?

  My HUD is all but dead. My comms a whole lot deader. If my crew were hurt, or killed, would I even know? Would Polybius even tell me?

  The arrows start blinking, and I curse. Machine Mind is right. No time for dawdling.

  Always solve the maximum number of problems in one strike.

  And it's right there.

  Fangs flicker as I narrow my eyes. Ghosting toward the clown on all fours.

  Easiest option is a quick grapple dash up to the head, and inside. But I'll go up its newly hunched back. Spikes or no, it's less swinging in the air.

  Then? Find a port. Jack in....

  I hesitate, again, as my implant screams static. My vision cracked by green and purple lines.

  Shit. Jack in? This could literally kill me.

  And Pol knows it could.

  I sub-vocalise a growl. Then, barely any louder, I hiss. "Need a spare implant. Who's closest?"

  The other arrow twitches.

  Wait. Green...? That's not a random colour. Is it?

  I veer off into a soundless run on all fours. Bounding over fat cables, and under the dead engines of creation.

  "No-!" Tufty's whispered voice pleads, somewhere far off in the cables and clutter. "N- No-!"

  I skid to a stop as my damaged ears triangulate - then I veer toward them. A streak on all fours, as the air tinkles with the giggles of a mad little girl.

  I drop caution. Pattering echoes off plate-metal machines as I bound faster and faster toward them. Erie, tinny, voices curling up through the squawking glitches of my dying implant.

  Princess is telling him a 'story'.

  ".....once upon a time there was a poor, lost, little kitty all trapped and alone! A lost lil thing, all curled up and sweet! Mewling and crying and hugging his tail.... Hoping against hope that somebody would save him!" Another sly giggle. A gasping cry of pain. "But then, one day, a Beautiful Fairy Princess came fluttering down....!'"

  "No! Nonono-!"

  "And she said.... 'Oh! How can you cry, my little green kitty, when a Fairy has come to grant all your Wishes?' And the kitty said-"

  "No! No! No!!! NO! NO!!!!!!"

  Princess sings out a laugh, wild and cheerily psychotic. "'Oh! Don't you fret your little head', The Fairy said! 'For we shall be Such Good Friends! And there'll be milk in your bowl, and brushes every day!!'"

  I can't get to him.

  I can't.

  "But oh how the kitty was quivering! Like my own happy heart!" The Evil Fairy coos in sickly sweet glee, echoing off iron and concrete. "And oh how the Princess did-"

  I catch a flash of pink and green between blurring machines.

  An instant of terrible clarity, frozen in my mind like a photograph.

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  There she is. That demonic girl.

  Her glittering wings flared wide above Tufty - who curls his small body tighter, and tighter. Pressing it deep into a cold steel corner. Shaking and twisting and squirming away from her. His doll-like face locked in a noiseless scream.

  Something primal punctures my heart like a railgun.

  And I forget all about the freaking clown.

  "LEAVE HIM ALONE!" I roar. Leaping the barrier in a wild blur of violence and hate. Feet hit cool metal, and I kick off a bulbous pipe. Claws flashing up through a dusty holoprojector.

  Which melts around my hand like water and magic.

  A holo of a projector?

  I grab the bar it hung from, and slam my heels into its wire-braided surface. Forcing myself to ignore the empty air beneath me. The three metric drop at the very edge of what I can handle.

  Her head snaps around. A look of wild glee twinkling in her eyes.

  "Oh! But Mummy Says You Gotta Play With Me!!!" She sings. "That's her Special Friendship spell! And she told me, when I say it, you gotta do everything I want!"

  What the Hell do I do here?

  If I were Demon, or even Kami, I could just grab Tufty. We would already be gone.

  But I can't.

  My hands just.... won't move.

  I'm caught in my trauma, just as he is.

  Trapped by illusions, and ghosts, with terribly smug smiles.

  But our noise will call The Clown, even if Princess doesn't. I've got seconds before it's in range. Even now, its massive blind body jerking as it tries to turn. Catching its curly shoes on the cables. Its heels on the edges of machines.

  They won't keep it long.

  So I tune everything out. The demented glitches. The static, whispering to me of errors. The screaming note of death every rising in the back of my ear - like a distant, but onrushing, train. Focusing myself, totally and utterly, on beating her illusions.

  On saving Tufty.

  Okay. Okay. What do I do?

  Fight her projectors?

  Easy enough - if I can find em. But where?

  I need to think, and fast.

  Princess loves her rigged games, just like our Evil Stepmother. But would she plaster every freaking machine in this massive factory with mil-spec projectors?

  No. Not bloody likely. Even for her, that's insane.

  Everything so far has been about stalking us with holo-bots, and funnelling us into traps. Meaning defences are mostly mobile, with a few scattered hard points.

  Entrances. Bottlenecks. That kinda thing.

  And she just killed all her own drone controllers. Which means she's stuck with whatever random-ass leftover-

  I suck a breath.

  It's the bloody factory.

  She's hacking the freaking factory. Taking over holoScreens built to show diagrams, parts, and jams buried deep inside.

  And now I bloody think about it, it's bloody obvious.

  No way she smuggled an actual multi-storey Plaything all the way from Toytown - a literal thousand miles away.

  She must have built it. Here. With the very manufacturing robots she attacked us with.

  Which means, we hack the factory we hack her.

  A demonic grin splits my face. So. All I gotta do is get Tufty to a terminal, and this is over.

  Mister Tickles crushes its boot on something fragile and noisy.

  In seconds, it'll be here. Which means I'm dead outta time.

  Which means I've got to face my fears. To grab Tufty and run.

  It's the only way.

  I twist in midair, and drop onto all fours behind Princess. But not too close. Smiling a wicked little smile, as I cast the blinding light of my flare as widely as I can.

  "Tufty." I snarl. "Follow me. I'll get ya out."

  "S-S-Spook. You-"

  "Tufty! Now! Move! Before-"

  "But you can't go." Princess trills as glittered nails itch the edges of his livid green hair. "How can you GO when I've got to get you all brushed up for Mummy???" A low giggle slips free. "Got to make you nice as nice! Like sugar and spice! So she doesn't think you're filthy animals."

  "Tufty. She's a holo. She ain't really there." I warn, stepping to the left as Princess steps right.

  "Spook-"

  "Ssh. Just close your eyes. Start movin' towards me."

  But with Princess, it's never so simple.

  "I...!!" Tufty stutters, one huge feline eye glittering with tears behind his fringe. Though the other side is barren. Dry. As if it doesn't care at all. "I...."

  " ....And, you know.... While we're playing Brush The Kitten....." The Fairy's tone slips darker as a pair of long, steely, dressmaking scissors appear in her hand. With a sparkle of magic. Snapping their long jaws with a Ka-snip Ka-snip of metal and murder. "I think it really is time we cut off his silly little fringe-"

  Tufty goes very, very still. His shining eye so huge, and quivering, and wet with tears. One clawed hand shaking as it rises to cover his already-covered eye.

  The one that hides a secret. The one you're never, ever, ever supposed to touch.

  My heart sticks solid.

  "Oh.... Shit....."

  Princess takes a single, dainty, step and the boy yowls in unimaginable terror. Writhing and twisting away from her. Frantic, now. Desperate. Lashing out at nothing with claws and spitting teeth as she reaches in with such gentle hands.

  Humming, so sweetly, as she snip snip snips the air.

  And there's nowhere to go. His small body already jammed tight into the smallest, saddest, little hole he could find. Tangled by cables. Hemmed in by hard metal edges.

  Hiding his fringe-covered eye, best he can, as her shadow crosses his face.

  But then, as if welling up from a terrible distance, my voice returns in an absolute roar.

  "GET AWAY FROM HIM!"

  I kick off the ground, like a rocket, as the vicious scissors kA-SNAP ever so close to his flat-back ears.

  My breath stops as I reach for her. Willing my flare to burn her to nothing, like a dream upon waking.

  I don't know what's in that holo. A drone? Or nothing at all?

  Either way, I can't let her touch it. Or cut it. Not even with a make-believe holo.

  But even as I hammer toward her, I realise something is terribly wrong.

  Something I could only have expected in my very worst nightmares.

  I only get a fraction of an instant to falter - in mid-air - as the flare fails to scrub her illusions away. Its brilliance, instead, shimmering upon her very real skin.

  Her very real dress.

  Her very real bows and glittery wings.

  Her very real body.

  The Fairy's head twists round on its neck, like nothing alive. Like Moon. And she backhands me right out of the air with her dainty little hand. Smashing my armoured back into a machine, at right-angles to Tufty.

  "Tag! You're it!!" She crows, hopping and giggling on the spot with her wand held high. The scissors all dancing and snapping around her, with terrible joy.

  Shearing its cold metal laugh. Flashing its dark, gemlike, eyes.

  And then Princess goes very, very, still. Her own dangerous, and utterly unhinged. "Did someone Learn Their Lesson?"

  She sticks her tongue out.

  I push myself up. Teetering, slightly, as everything fuzzes and crackles. Purple fractures bleeding down my vision, as her head tilts. Robotically. A plastic smile ripping plastic lips.

  "Oh, my! I guess not!" She crows.

  Merry, and mad, and glittering with psychopathic glee. To say nothing of actual glitter.

  So that's it. That's the trick.

  Bitch printed herself a brand-new body.

  Fool me to assume the bitch is out of cards. Princess is never out of cards.

  Not until she falls freaking over. And even then, there's always one more.

  If she didn't keep making the same freaking mistakes, she'd be unstoppable.

  "Tufty." I wheeze. "I'll keep her busy. You run."

  "See you do care!" She hums. Casually stabbing the words into my guts.

  "What." I stagger away from the machine. One hand on the ground.

  "Oh?" Her head tilts the other way. "Thought we didn't notice? How bizarre! You really did!" She touches a plastic hand to plastic lip. "And here I thought you were smart....."

  She tails off, as my own dark laughter echoes off iron and steel.

  I grin like death. "God. I've been waitin' so long for this."

  It's her turn to stutter. Eyes flickering, as she checks every one of her calculations. Hunting for the massive freakin' mistake she just made.

  "What. For what?"

  I crick out my back. Then my neck.

  "Somethin' to punch." I say, quite softly. As the floor shakes again.

  Her eyes turn sharp. "Oh yes?"

  "I'm gonna murder you for real." I chuckle. "I'm gonna enjoy it."

  "Oh" She beams. "Oh? Is that all? Why, for a moment I was worried!"

  Something icy taps my soul on the back.

  Tricks within tricks.

  "You know." Princess says, quite cheerfully, as the shaking suddenly stops. A huge shadow darkening all but her. "I hatey-hate it when other children break my Toys. But. I suppose it doesn't really matter....."

  All around us, the engines of an ancient world kick into sudden motion.

  "....not when I can make just as many as I want!"

  Oh God. The Factory.

  We're in a freaking Factory.

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