Chapter 9 - History Lesson

Author's Notes:
- Part two of the massively ginormous chapter of doom has arrived! Though, since I split it, it's technically two chapters. Whatever lol.
- There's some heavy stuff in this chapter. Personally, I really enjoy it. I think it's some of Brian's best writing, as far as this story is concerned.
- Enjoy! :)


“Aw, I missed you too, sister.”
Dolosus, Kat, and Nabin spun around. There, blocking their exit, were Kitty, Cinta, and Feebus. Kitty was smiling menacingly, Cinta was twirling her hair, and Feebus was glaring.
“It’s you three, again!” Kat yelled, grabbing Crimson tighter.
“Honestly, did you think it would be this easy to rescue your friend?” Kitty sneered.
“For a second, I kind of did,” Dolosus whispered to himself.
“So there are four of you and two of us,” Cinta said holding up the wrong number of fingers, “which means we each get two of them. Oh yay!”
“Take a closer look, idiot,” Feebus said. “That one over there isn’t real. He’s made out of wood.”
“So then there are only three of them? Oh man, this is going to be so much harder now,” Cinta whined.
“That’s okay, Cinta, you can have the boys,” Kitty said. “The only one I want to fight is my sister.
“I’m not fighting you again. I just want to get my friend out of here,” Kat protested.
“No can do,” Kitty scoffed. “I got in trouble last time I let you go. Taking you out is the only way I can redeem myself.”
Dolosus inched closer to Kat and whispered, “I’ll take her. You and Nabin just get Crimson out of here.”
“But your powers don’t work in this mansion,” Kat whispered back. “Last time you fought her you nearly got your butt kicked.”
“That was because I was fighting both her and Crimson. Now there is just one to worry about.”
“But what about the other one? The girl with the ribbons”
“She’s no threat. I fought back in Guatemala. I didn’t even break a sweat. Now go.”
“But I can’t leave you here by yourself. Maybe I’ll stay and fight.”
“In that dress and in heels? You’d never make it.”
“If you two stopped arguing, maybe you would realize there is another one of you here. I can take out this Kitty person while the two of you get away,” Nabin said.
Dolosus and Kat exchanged looks that said We really don’t have the time to argue about this and there isn’t really a better solution. Finally, they nodded their heads to Nabin. In a flash he reached into his pocket and grabbed what looked like a cross piece to a marianet with several buttons on it. He pressed a button and the puppet guard jumped forward, catching Kitty and Cinta off guard and knocking them into the wall. Kat grabbed Crimson, threw her over her shoulder and ran for it. Dolosus followed her.
“They’re getting away!” Feebus yelled.
“I’ll get them!” Cinta yelled, almost giggling, and chased after them.
Kitty rubbed her head and began to follow Cinta, but the guard puppet threw himself and blocked her path. She jumped into the air and kicked its head off. Then, intrigued, she turned and faced Nabin.
“You’re a new face,” she said.
“My name is Nabin, and I am your opponent.”
He pressed another button on the controller. The headless guard stood up and bear hugged Kitty from behind. She squirmed and wriggled but couldn’t get free.


Cinta chased Dolosus and Kat through the mansion. Without Nabin to guide them, they had to rely on their own senses to try and find a way out. Every so often Cinta would shoot a ribbon at them, and Dolosus would easily slice through it.
“Don’t let them escape!” Feebus yelled as he ran to catch up to Cinta.
Dolosus and Kat ran through a pair of large doors and found themselves in the hall where the masquerade was. The party was over and everyone had gone home so the hall was empty, but this meant they knew where they were.
“There’s the exit!” Dolosus yelled, pointing to the doors at the top of the stairs at the other end. They ran across the dance floor. Dolosus didn’t see the ribbons wrap around his and Kat’s ankles. They fell to the floor. Crimson slid out of Kat’s arms and across the floor.
“These damn ribbons!” Dolosus nearly screamed. He cut them up again and actually began to stomp on them. “I have had enough of these things!”
“Dolosus!” Kat screamed trying to calm him down.
“Is he making fun of my ribbons?” Cinta wondered as she entered the hall.
“They…finally…stopped…moving…” Feebus panted.
“Feebus you really need to start doing some more cardio,” Cinta said.
“Don’t start…with me…Look…just kill them…alright?”
“Kill them? How? Every time I send out a ribbon he just cuts it up.”
“Use the ribbons in your hair!”
“Those ones? Alright,” Cinta groaned and untied the ribbons holding back her long hair. She held them aloft in the air and they sprang to life, just like all the others. She let go and the two of them zipped across the room toward Dolosus and Kat. Dolosus swung his scythe again and expected to cut them up. Instead, one of the ribbons actually evaded his slash, wrapped themselves around the scythe and slithered up the pole, up his arm, across his shoulder, and wrapped itself around his throat. He grabbed at it and tried his hardest to rip it off, but the ribbon only tightened itself. He looked over and saw the second ribbon had itself around Kat’s neck.
“I really don’t like to use these ribbons,” Cinta explained. “They work so fast, they take all the fun out of the fight. These ribbons are made from a special material that will wrap itself around my enemy’s neck and choke them to death. The harder you try and pull it off, the tighter it gets.”
Dolosus was clawing at the ribbon so much that blood actually began to trickle down his fingers as his nails cut into his skin. Kat head began swimming. She couldn’t stand anymore and fell to her knees. Cinta just watched while she played with her hair.


Kitty’s tail wrapped around the puppet’s legs and pulled it out from underneath it. The dummy went down and she was free. Before Nabin could press another button, she kicked the puppet into the pit.
“So, you’re Nabin? My name is Kitty,” she smiled. “So you control that thing with that gadget in your hand?”
“That’s right. I’m a puppeteer.”
“Well then, I guess I don’t have much of a choice but to fight you.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but I must confess I am not ready to fight. I’m really here to just act as a guide for the other two, but we hadn’t expected to run into anyone like you.”
“So you’re stalling me until the others can leave the mansion?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Now I hate to disappoint you, but escaping Maion’s mansion isn’t easy. If they make through the maze of rooms and hallways, they still have to beat Cinta. She may be a ditz, but she can be tough…sometimes.”
“I guess we won’t know until one of us survives our conflict and goes to check on them.”
“Sorry, but I have no interest in someone who can’t fight,” she said as she turned to go.
“I said I wasn’t ready to fight. I never said I couldn’t.”
Kitty stopped. She turned and found Nabin sitting on the ground, cross-legged.
“If you’ll give me just ten minutes, I will gladly battle you,” he said.
“I don’t know, I really should be going and kicking my sister’s @$$,” Kitty pondered. Maion had grounded her before for letting her sibling rivalry get in the way of her duty. Her duty was to guard Crimson. So did she want to go after Kat because Kat had taken Crimson, or did she want to go after her because she wanted to fight her sister? She figured the safest route would be to stay and fight this guy. After all, he didn’t look that strong. In fact, he looked a little worn and fragile. Plus, Cinta could take care of them until she got there. If all else failed, she had the ribbons in her hair that always killed her enemies.
“Alright, deal,” she said as she sat down across from him on the floor.
Nabin took off his backpack. He unzipped it and dumped the contents out onto the floor in front of him. Out came several stick and ball pieces of the same wooden material as the dummy she had knocked into the pit. He opened a sheet of what appeared to be directions. Then, he took a screwdriver out of the backpack and began to assemble to pieces.
“What is all that?” Kitty asked him.
“They’re the pieces to two puppets my master gave me. She told me to use them just in case I ran into a fight, but like I said I didn’t expect to so I never bothered to assemble them.”


Crimson chose this moment to awaken from her semi-coma. The first thing she noticed was her head banging and a throbbing pain from the bump on it. She had no idea where she was or how she got there. The last thing she could remember was Kitty and Cinta taking her down hallway in a hidden passage…then she leaned over a pit…then she started falling. Now she was lying on the floor of a giant hall that had walls lined with tables. True, her vision was incredibly blurry, but she could still make out the shapes of two people near her. One seemed to be tall and thin, and holding a stick of some sort. The other had long pink hair and was holding…a leaf?
Kat? No way! Is it Kat? It has to be! With that hair and that leaf it has to be her!
Crimson tried to sit, gritting her teeth through the pain in her head. As her vision got clearer she could make out that Kat was clutching at her neck. There was a blue strip of fabric running across it. It must have been on very tight because she looked like she was trying to get it off. In fact her face was turning blue. She had fallen to her knees. She was choking!
Crimson looked to the other person standing near her. It was the man from the bridge, the guy with the scythe who had tried to kill her three times already. What was he doing there? He also had a blue strip across his neck and seemed to be acting the same way as Kat.
Crimson looked around for some sort of explanation as to why her best friend and her worst enemy were both dressed very nicely and choking to death in a giant ballroom. Her roaming eyes landed on a pair of giant double doors. Standing in the doorway was Cinta, one of Kitty’s friends and the one who pushed her down the pit. She was smiling and watching Kat and the man choke to death. She was the one doing it. The things around their necks were ribbons. They weren’t thinking straight because of the unexpected cut off from oxygen. Crimson had to do something, anything to save her best friend.


“How much longer are you going to be?” Kitty asked.
“Just a few more minutes,” Nabin said as he tightened a screw.
They had been sitting in silence for what seemed like to Kitty forever. She was beginning to get bored. Nabin could see this as she let out a long sigh.
“So, Kat is your sister?” he asked.
“Hm? Oh, yes, she is.”
“If she’s your sister, why do you want to fight her so much?”
“We got into a fight a long time ago. We hate each other now.”
“What was the fight about?”
“I barely even remember anymore. It seems like such a long time ago,” her voice drifted off as her eyes searched the past. She shook herself. “Anyway, she ran away from home after it. She said she never wanted to see any of us again; mom, dad, and myself I mean. My parents got awful heartbroken about it. My mother cried for days while my dad just stopped paying attention to things, including where he was driving. He got into a car accident and died. My mom took herself shortly after that. They barely paid attention to me. Eventually, I set out on my own. Maion found me. She took me in, gave me food and shelter. In exchange, I gave her my services.”
“Well, don’t worry. I’m sure you two would have been good friends again.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Your history. You were close once before. Once your history starts to repeat you’ll be close again.”
“Repeat?”
“History repeats itself. Everything that happens to everyone has already happened to someone else. There are only so many plot lines a life can take. The Earth is too old to keep coming up with new ones. The Aztecs, Alexander the Great, Atilla the Hun, Rome: all great empires that failed…that were destined to fail.”
“I still don’t-”
“Don’t you get what I’m saying? I have never lost a fight before. I always kill my target. And when history repeats itself, it will repeat this battle too. You, as my enemy, are destined to lose and die in this fight.”
“Target? Wait, just who are you anyway?”
“I was once Demonic’s top assassin.”


Dolosus and Kat were losing oxygen fast. Their faces were turning blue. Kat was on her hands and knees and even Dolosus was close to kneeling.
“You see?” Cinta whined to Feebus. “I told you that ribbon would kill them too quickly. It’s too bad to. I’ve already fought the guy with the scythe, but I wanted to see how I would fare against that giant leaf thing-a-mabob.”
“Duck!” Feebus yelled.
“Silly, you’re not a-”
Cinta never finished that sentence. At that moment a saucer went soaring through the air and smashed into the side of her head. As she got hurt, the ribbon choking Dolosus and Kat loosened ever so slightly, just enough to let them catch a quick breath.
“What the hell was that!” Cinta yelled rubbing her temple.
“Look!” Feebus yelled, pointing with his wing. Cinta followed with her eyes, her gaze landing on Crimson. Crimson was standing tall, a fierce fire burning in her eyes.
“Nobody treats my best friend like that,” she growled and pulled her katana from its sheath.


“Top assassin?” Kitty asked.
“Yes, this was back when the organization was first starting out. There were only a few members back then and, like I said, I always hit my mark,” Nabin replied.
“So what happened?”
Nabin paused for a second to fasten the head to one of the puppets.
“How much do you know about Demonic’s organization?” he asked.
“Not much,” she replied.
“Do you know anything about the people who work for her?”
“I can guess they’re evil people she hired to kill.”
“Then you would guess wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
“Demonic doesn’t hire people…she creates them!”
“Wh-”
“That brush that she carries around has the power to create anything out of nothing. She paints things in the air and they come to life. One day I stumbled across this secret. My target was a little boy. Just before one of my puppets broke his neck he called out for his parents. For some reason that scream stayed with me for a while. It made me realize I couldn’t remember my own mother and father. I had memories of growing up on a farm, of playing catch with my dad, kissing my mom good night. Yet, strangely when these memories came to mind, I could never see their faces. My parents were faceless phantoms in a sea of dreams. I wanted to find out exactly what was going on, so one day I snuck into Demonic’s room and rummaged through some of her things. I found a sketch pad that had pictures drawn on a lot of pages. I thought that just meant she was an aspiring artist, but taking a closer look let me realize that all the sketches were of the current members of the organization. I even found a page with me on it. Well, as you can guess, I started putting two and two together and freaking out. I ran away from the organization. I followed all the memories I could muster to my ‘original home.’ Sadly, I found out the farm never existed. Demonic had made up all those memories when she made me. There was no farm, no mother, no father, no Nabin. I wasn’t…I’m not real.”
“Oh my God.”
“That was pretty much my reaction. Eventually I started to act out. I wanted to find out who I really was. I wanted a real life. So, every opportunity I got I ran away from the organization. And every single time, she would send a pawn to go retrieve me. The farthest I ever got to getting away was when I was assigned to kill some guy in Japan. I sent a puppet disguised as myself in my place, sold my tickets, and was on the next flight to Egypt. I spent a year hiding, and building up a little puppet army for myself so I could fight back whenever Demonic found me. That was actually the reason why she created Dolosus. A man who is strong, agile, and teleportation ability? All the others she sent to bring my back from Egypt were defeated by my hand. So she made him, not to fight but to open a wormhole that I would fall into and get taken straight back to the organization. It was terrible. I spent so much time and money trying to get away, and in a split second I was right back where I started.”
“So Dolosus took over your spot as Demonic’s top assassin?”
“Exactly. Once he sent me back, Demonic put me in solitary confinement. Two years of being by myself have taught me some valuable life lessons. The most important is the lesson about destiny. I was created by Demonic to serve her. No matter how many times I tried to break out, I couldn’t escape that fate. I’m destined to be her servant until the day I die.”
Nabin tightened one last screw and stood up.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
The puppets he had built were only about half his size. Their bodies were so thin, they looked like they were made out of straws connected to balls at the joints. The heads were disproportional to the rest of the bodies. One of them had a single eyeball while the other eyesocket was empty. The other wore a purple bandana around its eyes and had long black hair. They were by far some of the creepiest things Kitty had ever seen.
Nabin waited for her to stand up. Then he reached in his pocket and took out the controller. He pressed a button and the two puppets started to twitch. Their limbs jerked into motion. Their heads realed up and looked ahead at Kitty. Then, without warning, the puppet with the bandana charged forward. Kitty countered the frontal assault by swinging her leg and kicking it clear across the room. She kept spinning and kicked a hidden dagger from her shoe at Nabin. He held up a hand to defend his face and jumped out of the way. He still got cut, but he bounced back and swung his controller, directing the one-eyed puppet to charge in. Kitty easily knocked this one away as well.
Nabin pressed some more buttons on his controller which directed the puppets to run in a circle around her. This time they both attacked from either side. Once again Kitty kicked them out of the way. She began to feel bad for Nabin. The fact of the matter was that the puppets were just too small and weak to do any actual fighting.
I better end this before I embarrass him anymore.
She ran right for Nabin. In such a tiny room, he couldn’t really run away so he pressed a button and the blindfolded puppet jumped in front of Kitty to block her path. She socked it right in the face and sent it flying into the wall, again. Then, she kicked the controller out of Nabin’s hand did a sort of cartwheel that resulted with him lying on his back on the ground and her pinning him down on top of his chest. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and pressed a button on the side. The antenna shrank inside the phone and out popped the blade of a dagger. She held the blade against his neck.
“Yield,” she commanded.
“Never,” he responded.
“I don’t really want to kill you. In fact, I kind of feel sorry for you.”
“You feel sorry me?”
“Yes! You believe in this history/destiny/fate crap and you don’t even realize none of it exists. Nobody controls your fate. Not history, and certainly not Demonic. Look at us now! You said you would beat me, but I’ve beaten you.”
“You think you’ve beaten me?”
Kitty suddenly felt very strong arms wrap around her and lift her off of Nabin. She tried to struggle, but the grip was too tight. She managed to turn her head slightly and saw it was the blindfolded puppet.
But how?
Nabin sat up and grinned at her. It was the first time he had smiled in a long time. It felt unfamiliar and alien, so much so that he stopped almost immediately.
“You think I need that controller to manipulate my dolls? Take a look at this,” he said and indicated a mark on the ground he had been hiding under his hand. It was a circle with a strange symbol in the middle, drawn in Nabin’s own blood. Kitty had a sudden flashback of the moment one of her knives cut his hand.
“You wanted me to cut you,” she whispered.
“Well I wasn’t going to cut myself,” he said. “This symbol is a powerful, ancient enchantment that Demonic taught me. The enchantment gets activated when I draw the symbol in my own blood. It puts a part of my soul into whatever else has the symbol. The symbol is already drawn inside the heads of these two puppets. Now we see as one. We speak as one. We fight as one.”
As he said all this, the one-eyed puppet picked up one of the daggers Kitty had thrown at him.
“You thought that was the real strength of my dolls. How cute. Anyway, like I said before: history shows that I am going to defeat you.”
The one-eyed puppet lifted its hand and threw the dagger right at Kitty’s face.


Crimson unsheathed her katana and ran for Cinta. Cinta screamed and ran away. She jumped on top of one of the tables and pointed her hand at Crimson. A band unwrapped itself from her arm and shot out. Crimson swung her sword and slashed the ribbon into pieces that fluttered to the ground. Cinta then had another ribbon wrap around the leg of a chair at the table and throw the chair at her foe. Crimson didn’t even stop running as she smashed the wooden chair. She jumped into the air, ready to cut into Cinta. The sword cut into the table as Cinta jumped to the next one. She jumped from table to table, using her ribbons to throw chairs at Crimson, who followed her across the table tops while smashing all the chairs to pieces.
Cinta jumped onto the hors d' oeuvre table, turned around, and shot two more ribbons. Rather than try to ensnare Crimson, the ribbons wrapped around the legs of the table she was on and flipped it. Crimson let out a scream as she fell to the floor amongst a myriad of silverware.
Cinta didn’t miss her opportunity. She threw out her hands and several ribbons wrapped around nearby tables. They lifted the tables up into the air and threw them all at Crimson. Crimson got up and darted back and forth, desperately trying to dodge the barrage of furniture. She missed a step and was flattened by one.
“I got her!” Cinta yelled joyously.
“Why were you frightened before? I thought you wanted to fight someone new,” Feebus wheedled.
“I did but…shut up!”
“I’m not beaten yet,” Crimson groaned as she lifted the table off of her. She stood up and held her sword at the ready.
This girl’s strength is quite obviously long-ranged attacks, so I need to constantly get close to her, Crimson thought.
She ran forward again. Cinta threw another table at her. This time Crimson summoned all her strength and slashed right through it, the two pieces falling to the ground at either side of her. She made it to the hors d' oeuvre table and made to cut right through Cinta’s feet. Cinta, however, had thrown a ribbon up to tie itself around a buttress. The ribbon pulled her up as Crimson’s sword slashed right through where her feet had been one second before. Cinta made it up to the buttress and held herself against it.
“You can’t get me up here!” she yelled, sticking her tongue out at Crimson.
Damn it...


Nabin looked down at the splash of blood on the ground.
“Clever girl,” he said.


Kitty stopped running and leaned against the pillar. She licked the fresh new wound on her tail.
That was too close, she thought.
The dagger had been maybe six inches from her face when her tail, which Nabin’s puppet had not restricted, shot up and knocked the dagger away, getting cut in the process. The blind-folded puppet had slackened its grip on her, and that was all she needed to wriggle free and run away. Now she was out in the main hall outside the hidden passage, hiding behind a half-pillar that had a bust of Lewis Carol on it.
Okay, so the puppets are stronger and faster now. Big deal, I can still beat them.
Her thoughts got interrupted by the sound of the bookcase opening. She peeked out from behind the pillar and saw the two puppets emerge from the passage. However, Nabin did not follow them. The two puppets split up and began to search the room.
Where is he?
She heard a thump above her head. When she looked up, she saw the one-eyed puppet crouched on top the bust. It looked left, then right, then down at her.
Relax. Nabin isn’t here. He can’t see you, so there’s no way…
The one-eyed puppet held up its hand. A little slit opened and knife slid out.
“shoot!” Kitty yelled.
She darted out of the way as the doll leaped down from the bust. It landed and looked at her. It leaped at her as another knife popped out of the other hand. She tried to get away but the puppet was persistent. She dodged a couple of lunges from its knives until her back was pinned against a wall. The puppet made to cut through her head, but she moved and the knife stuck in the wall. She stumbled away from the doll, its head turning a full 360 degrees to follow, until she saw the second puppet land in front of her. It held up a fist which shot out at Kitty. She ducked and felt it go right over her head, and through the glass out the window. She ran and jumped into the air, a kick aimed right at the puppet. Even though it now had one hand, it was still deadly. It grabbed her foot and used her momentum to throw her into another statue, which toppled off its stand and shattered onto the ground.
“Haha!” Nabin’s laughter echoed across the hall.
Kitty picked herself up from the rubble and pieces of the broken statue. She was pretty sure a bone was out of place somewhere.
I don’t understand. How could his puppets know where I am?
She looked up and saw the two puppets staring at her. The one-eyed one had pulled its knife hand from the wall. The blindfolded one had its mouth open, and there was a speaker inside from which Nabin’s voice was emanating.
“Are you confused? Did you really think you could beat me?”
“How are you controlling your puppets?” she yelled back.
“Remember what I said about the enchantment?”
“You said…you see as one, you speak as one…”
“We fight as one.”
“That puppet with the eye…you can see everything that puppet sees. Its eye is connected to yours. Just like this one’s voice and mouth are connected to yours!”
“Exactly.”


Cinta stuck her tongue out at Crimson.
“I’m going to rip that tongue out of your mouth,” Crimson snarled.
“Good luck reaching it!” Cinat yelled back.
Crimson looked around until she found a rather long piece of ribbon on the ground. She tied the end to the hilt of her katana. She then threw her katana at Cinta. The sword flew through the air and cut through the ribbon that was holding Cinta up. She screamed as she fell.
“Oh my butt!” she cried. “I think I landed on my butt!”
Seeing Cinta wimper almost extinguished the flame that had been burning inside of Crimson. She walked over to Cinta, who looked up at her with a tear rolling down her face.
“I hurt my butt,” she sniveled.
“I know,” Crimson said in a calm, soothing voice.
“Forget about your butt!” Feebus yelled. “Kill her!”
“What?” Cinta asked and looked over at him.
“She is your enemy! God, can’t you do anything right?”
“Alright, that is it!” Crimson yelled at Feebus. “I have had enough of you! This poor girl is trying her hardest and all you can do is ridicule her!”
“Hey, nobody talks to my Feebus that way,” Cinta whined and slapped Crimson across the face.
Crimson was shocked. Her instincts kicked in and she slapped Cinta back. Cinta was shocked as well. She slapped her again. And again. And again. The two had an all out slapping match. Finally Cinta screamed and grabbed Crimson’s hair. Crimson screamed and kicked Cinta in the shin. The two squabbled about until they pushed themselves away from each other. They went right back to their fight of Cinta throwing ribbons and Crimson cutting them up.
“That sword of hers is the problem!” Feebus yelled. “Get rid of it!”
“Ok, seriously,” Crimson whispered to herself as she ran to the wall and cut the rope that was holding up one of the chandeliers. “Shut up.”
The chandelier fell right on top of Feebus. There was a short squawk, and then silence.
“Feebus!” Cinta screamed.
With renewed resolve for vengeance, Cinta jumped into the air and spun around so fast, almost all the ribbons came off of her and darted toward Crimson. They made a circle with a three foot radius. Before Cinta could constrict the circle, though, Crimson sliced through it with her sword.
Cinta landed. She took of her last two ribbons, held one in each and ran toward Crimson. Crimson ran towards her. Cinta used the ribbons as whips and tried to hit Crimson. Several times Crimson got slapped in the face and several times received many minor cuts. Crimson tried to cut up Cinta, but the girl was moving too fast. She started darting in between the pillars on the outside of the dance floor. Crimson cut down some of the pillars and tried her best to keep up. Finally, Cinta hid behind one of the pillars and sent the last ribbons out to tie around Crimson’s hands. Crimson was trapped with each hand going in a different direction around the pillar. Cinta pulled hard and Crimson’s face smashed into the beam.
Blood trickled down from Crimson’s nose. She was starting to get tired. She wanted the fight to end. As she caught her breath, she happened to glance over at Kat and Dolosus. The two were sprawled out on the ground now, barely moving. Determination built up in her. Crimson pulled back as hard as she could and tried to force Cinta out from the other side. Cinta matched her in the tug of war. Then, Crimson let go. The built up tension flung Cinta around the other side. Crimson went to meet her. At the moment the two literally ran into each other, there came a sound. It was the sound of metal piercing through flesh and bone. The two of them looked down. Crimson was holding onto her katana. The blade was running into Cinta’s body, her blood being spilled onto the ground. Cinta looked back up into Crimson’s eyes.
“That was fun…” she said and fell backwards.


The one-eyed puppet opened its mouth and shot two daggers at Kitty. She dodged them, crouched on all fours, and ran as fast as she could down the hallway. The dolls may have had more strength, but she knew the layout of the mansion better than anyone. After a couple of minutes of being chased, she managed to out maneuver the two and get away. She snuck up a staircase and down another hallway that led her back to the hall with the secret passage. From up high, she could see what a mess they had made it. She made a note to apologize to Maion later for it.
The good thing about having a cat like muscular system was that she was amazing when it came to moving in stealth. She crawled up to the balcony and peeked over the edge. Just as she thought, the blindfolded puppet was still in the hall. It was on guard patrol.
He’s using those puppets as himself; one for seeing and one for talking, both for fighting. That’s what puppeteers do. They make their marianets do all the hard and dirty work for them. Meanwhile, the puppeteer hides somewhere safe. That one puppet is guarding the passageway, so Nabin never actually left the hidden room. And while the one that can see is off chasing me somewhere else in the mansion…
She pulled herself over the railing and landed lightly on the floor. The blindfolded puppet didn’t move.
Just as I thought.
She walked over to the bookshelf and grabbed the book that opened the secret passage. Another good thing about having cat-like abilities was a heightened sense of sound. So when the blindfolded puppet stepped on a piece of the broken statue, Kitty instinctly knew to duck. The puppet’s fist punched through some of the books. It then raised the arm without the hand and shot about five needles. Kitty managed to stumble out of the path of three, but took two to the arm. She stumbled away. Distracted by the pain of the needles, she didn’t hear the second puppet appear behind her, punching her full in the side of her head. As she flew through the air, it opened its mouth and launched another dagger. Kitty contorted her body at the last minute and took the dagger to her side instead of her chest.
She screamed in pain as she fell to the floor. When she looked up, she saw the one-eyed puppet running towards her again. Her tail rose up and made to strike the puppet, but it caught her tail in its hand. She threw a punch and it caught that as well. With her other hand, she grabbed her own dagger and stabbed the puppet through the eye. Without a free hand, the doll couldn’t defend itself. It didn’t scream. It was an inanimate object that felt no pain. But Kitty felt a sense of pride now that she had blinded her enemy.
“You think I’ll go down that easily?” Nabin called.
The blindfolded puppet tackled Kitty and knocked her away from it partner. She slid a few feet on the floor. She was bleeding, she was bruised, and now she was surrounded. The blindfolded puppet opened its mouth again.
“Did you really think you could beat me? I told you history repeated itself.”
I don’t get it. I took away its eye. How could he still see me?
The puppets began to close in.
Even before I took the eyeball. The blindfolded one knew I was here. How?
They drew closer.
Maybe…maybe it wasn’t the puppet who saw me. Maybe it was the puppeteer! Maybe Nabin is in the room. That’s it! He’s hiding in the room somewhere, watching the battle from a safe hiding spot where he can see everything!
She closed her eyes.
The puppets both withdrew a dagger, ready to kill.
“I told you, but you just didn’t listen,” Nabin gloated.
Kitty spun around 135 degrees and threw her dagger 50 degrees upwards. The weapon soared through the air and struck a mass behind a curtain.
“Ahh!” Nabin screamed.
The curtain moved and Nabin fell from behind it onto the floor, the dagger sticking out of his chest. The puppets started twitching and fidgeting. Then they fell lifeless to the floor. Kitty walked calmly over to Nabin.
“How,” he whispered through a labored breath. “You found me. How?”
“These ears aren’t for aesthetic purposes,” Kitty said, pointing to the triangle ears on top of her head. “Even though you were making your voice come from the puppet, you still needed to talk. All that thing was was a speaker for your microphone.”
“But I don’t understand,” Nabin gasped. “What about history? I’ve never lost-”
“To hell with history!”
Nabin stared into her eyes. At that moment, his eyes seemed to get brighter, as if a shadow had moved away.
“You said before…that no one…controls…our fate…”
“That’s right. You weren’t destined to be Demonic’s slave, she just brainwashed and manipulated you. You’ve changed your history more times than you know. When you ran away and got caught, you eventually stopped. You’re history didn’t repeat itself then. And now…”
“Now I’m…dying. Ha…no way to repeat that. You were right. I only regret…not realizing the truth…a little earlier. Thank you.”
The last breath escaped his lips and spoke no more.




Owari.

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