Authors note: Okay, if this friggin' sixth entire chapter re-write works (seriously, I've scrapped around 24k worth of words trying to get things to WORK), then this is the video game chapter I mentioned a while ago. It might start with lines from another well-known game, but the rest of it won't have a single thing to do with that. In fact, I'd be very surprised if someone did guess the game I took inspiration from for this chapter, even though it has a 'cult classic' status on Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. If anyone guesses it then 'You got a secret bonus point.' Yes, that line might be a hint.

Right, on with the show!


My eyes were closed when I became conscious again, but I must have moved because I heard a voice.

"Hey, you're finally awake"

That's not Mimi talking to me… Where am I?

Slowly, I forced my eyes open. Everything was red. As I slowly became aware of things, I could just about make out a rhythmic clanking. What is this, a roller coaster? I wasn't going to get my answer any time soon. After everything I've been through lately, I'm sick of the colour red. I closed my eyes, and I could feel my body starting to wind down again. Limbs getting heavy… I guess tiredness from running around a million Pure Illusion worlds with barely any rest or food was catching up to me. It was comfortable here. There was barely any pain in my ribs, which was amazing, too.

Maybe I can try and fall asleep here… Just a little rest…

"You were trying to cross the border, right?" The strange voice said again. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't. In fact, they carried on like that for a while. It pissed me off. Okay, fine. I'm not sleeping any time soon… I opened my eyes again, but this time I took in my surroundings beyond 'everything is red'.

…And I only had questions.

First thing I noticed, was that Mimi was nowhere to be seen. I'd guess she just dumped me here and left me to it, after all, she did say it'd be best not to be around people in this world…

But honestly, I didn't think I was going to have a problem with that.

Because beyond myself, there wasn't a single person to be seen.

Yet, I wasn't alone here.

Well, clearly, I wasn't alone here, I've had a voice talking to me this whole time, but it was a little freaky to see what it had come from. Apart from me, there was space enough for four others in this place. And all the seats were occupied by puppets, as tall as I wasF.

The one that had spoken to me to start with (and was still droning on now) seemed to be made entirely of wood, but incredibly well carved and painted. It looked like a soldier in a fantasy world. His helmet covered his head, leaving his face exposed, revealing bright eyes, and light stubble on his chin, which rose and dropped as he spoke. His… 'clothes' I guess were what looked like a tunic and metal armour (it was kinda hard to tell. The helmet had very clear shapes cut into it, that didn't look like hair, but the guy's body seemed to have something shining painted on it, despite being entirely flat).

The other occupants in the room weren't as well detailed as the soldier puppet. In fact, it looked like they had things wrong with them. One was painted like a peasant in rough patchwork clothes, and moved ones of its hands over one of its legs, which was on backwards, and seemed to be twitching uncontrollably. Another was painted like a pirate, in long coat and dark trousers, complete with peg leg, eyepatch and a parrot on its shoulder. Every now and then, a voice came from that direction, which I couldn't understand over the solider talking, but I thought I heard the word 'treasure'. I thought it was odd how quiet it was, and wondered what was wrong with it, when the pirate's mouth opened, but what came out was a loud, harsh 'SQUARK!' the parrot turned to the pirate, and its beak opened and closed, and heard the grumbling again.

The last one… was barely painted or detailed at all. It looked like someone had taken a plain wooden art dummy and wanted to paint it, but only managed a few clumsy strokes in places, before giving up with the idea and throwing it aside to work on something else. Or at least, that was the picture I got of it, seeing it sitting, hunched over, staring down at the floor. There wasn't a single facial feature to be seen on it, but something about it… It looked so dejected, that I actually started to get a little worried about it.

"Hey, are you okay?" I asked the dejected one. Its head twitched in my direction a little, but it didn't rise to look at me.

The soldier puppet was still rambling on about whatever-the-crap, so it probably hadn't noticed me at all. Just as I was about to question if I'd ever spoken out loud, the peasant puppet with the weird leg spoke up.

"That one won't talk to you. No mouth."

Hearing that only made me feel more worried about the badly-painted puppet. But I have someone here talking to me. I can get information. "What's going on here?" I asked.

The peasant looked around at the other puppets in the room before turning back to me. "We were all captured by the master of this world." The puppet's expression couldn't change, but its voice held a hint of fear to it. "Defective creations aren't allowed here."

He said that, like it explained everything, but for me, it only raised questions. I was about to ask one, when all of a sudden, the rhythmic clanking stopped. The peasant puppet jumped up in his spot.

"We're here! We can't be! Not now!" He seemed to want to run away, but his backwards-facing leg, just kept pulling him back whenever the regular one tried to take a step forward.

"What's going on? Why are you so jumpy?!" I was starting to feel panicked myself, just seeing how distressed the peasant was.

"We're defective! We're going to be destroyed!" His voice came out as an odd wail. "There's nothing we can do!" He started to bang on the top of the red vehicle (which I hadn't even realised was there), and 'clawed' at it with wooden fingers, as if trying to pry it apart. No matter how hard he tried, no damage to the vehicle was done. Realising his desperate attempts were futile, he hunched over, and his voice was thick with sadness. "We're going to burn!"

Burn?! That made me stand up. As if on cue, I heard pipes hissing, and then a fire, roaring to life. Maybe it's because the thing we were trapped in was red too, but the temperature in this place seemed to climb a million degrees. My panic was about to give away to pure terror, and although I could feel my chest expanding as I breathed, it wasn't long before it felt like rope was tightening along it, forcing me to struggle for breath.

I can't burn… I need to save Yuyu…

I need to get out of here!

Maybe it was just instinct by now, but my hands immediately went to my weapon belt, to see if I had a solution, and thankfully I did. I'm not entirely sure how I forgot about my rockets at all until now, but I was pretty glad I did, because I still had a couple left, and that meant I could probably bust out of here.

"Get back!" I ordered, trying to use one arm to shove all the puppets behind me, before I shot the wall farthest away from everyone. Now I think about it, it was kinda dumb to have launched something explosive in such a small space, as there was now black smoke everywhere, but as it cleared, it revealed a huge gaping hole, leading to a lush green world and the bright blue sky outside.

The puppets didn't wait. They shoved past me, one by one, jumping from the hole and into freedom. I heard the peasant said "Thank you!" to me, and a squark from the pirate puppet, as they rushed past. The solider was still continuing his monologue, which didn't surprise me. As I was about to jump out myself, I realised there was one puppet that didn't rush past me. Although I was still feeling terrified, and wanted nothing more than to get out of there, I turned to face the dejected puppet, and grabbed its hand. "Let's go!"

I was about to jump out the hole with the puppet, when I heard a whoosh and crackle of fire, as it began to engulf the vehicle. I looked up, and although I wanted nothing more than to move, I found myself rooted to the spot. I'm too late. I should have left without it... Images of melting faces began to flood my mind I... I should have tried to save them... I was too late... I could feel the intense heat prickling on my skin. Maybe I deserve this...

Suddenly, the puppet that remained in the vehicle moved. It seemed to leap up from its seat a lot faster than it looked capable of, and charged for the hole in the side of the vehicle. I didn't realise quite how tight my grip on its hand was, until I was yanked along with it.

About a second later, bright tongues of fire swallowed the red vehicle whole, and it hung there in the sky, like a sun that was falling to Earth. Falling...

I'm falling!

Suddenly awareness struck me. I was looking at the ground, which was solid blocks of green, and it was rising to meet me quickly. Before I had time for that to really register in my head, the puppet tugged my hand, pulling me closer to it, and wrapping one arm around me, and it landed neatly.

I'm... alive... I tried to take a couple of deep breaths, to calm down and take that fact in. It was then that I noticed that my ribs weren't hurting half as much as I felt they should be, but they were still slightly agitating. How did Mimi fix them anyway? My answer came in the form of my hair, some of which can fallen from being tied up at the top of my head, as it drifted in front of my face. It's longer than usual... She must have sped up time for me, like she did with Papika in Pure Illusion...

When I felt able to, I gently pried myself free from the puppet's grip, and stood next to it. In proper daylight, I got a better look at its messy paint job. Most of it was a mix of careless splashes of black against the body, and what looked like patches of red stained into the wood, spreading from the hands and feet, as if someone had dipped them in blood. As I looked up from one of the hands though, I realised that its left arm was a different colour to the rest of its body, a deeper brown, as if it that one limb was made from different wood entirely. It also had a mark on it, near the shoulder, a dark blue ring. I went to look at its face then, and was about to thank it for saving me, but my breath caught in my throat.

It has no face.

The peasant puppet had told me it didn't have a mouth, but... I wasn't expecting that. I hadn't met many inhabitants, but all of them seemed to be nicely shaped and carved and painted, all of them lovingly crafted... And this one looked like someone didn't even bother with it. Just slapped some paint on it, and chucked it aside. Is that enough for you to be classed as 'defective' in this world? The thought made me mad. All someone would have to do is spend a little more time on it. It's not that difficult…

Somehow, my brain completely skipped over the fact that we were standing in the middle of what I could only think to describe as a busy clockwork town. Every building seemed to be made up of bright pastel colours, soft yellows, oranges and pinks, with contrasting boldly coloured roof tiles. Most of them were boxy, a few had rounded tops, or domes on top of them. There was a constant clicking noise, like gears grinding together, and it took me a moment to realise it came from the inhabitants around us. These guys weren't puppets exactly, some were wind-up toy animals, like little ducks and cats, that clattered around on wooden legs. Others looked like clowns on unicycles, which wheeled everywhere cackling, or looked like wooden dogs, which barked and jumped around. There were a couple of princess dolls that were having a conversation and laughing… This whole place seemed to be bustling, so teeming with activity, it was becoming difficult to see this place as being made up of toys. It felt more like a real-life town.

Without warning, sirens and klaxons started to go off all over.

"ESCAPE! THERE'S BEEN AN ESCAPE!"

Startled by the sudden blaring noise, my fear spiked again. I wasn't the only one effected. Upon hearing the alarm, the whole mood in the town shifted. The princesses, who were laughing, suddenly looked very distressed. The barking dogs were whimpering, and trying to hide in alleyways between the colourful buildings, with the cats and ducks rushing to join them, stacking on top of each other. Unlike the others though, the unicycle clowns became more energetic. Their cackles became menacing, and their once joyful smiles, became wicked grins. Arms that were waving around in the air were now posed, ready to strike. I gulped, trying to swallow my nerves. We need to get out of here.

"Come on!" I said, pulling the puppet with me, as I tried to run for an alleyway before it filled up with animals. I got there a lot faster than I thought, and soon discovered there's a reason the animals were stacking themselves on top of each other, I ended up smacking into what I thought was a path to the rest of the town. What it turned out to be, was just an incredibly well-painted board.

Although it hurt, thankfully, it was my left side that took most of the damage, so I didn't upset my ribs too much. That didn't stop be feeling dazed and confused. A solid wall? The puppet I was pulling with me stopped before coming into contact with it. Its head tilted to the side a little, as if trying to ask what I was doing. I ignored its silent question, and instead ran in the opposite direction, feet hitting hard green boards, only to have to force myself to skid to a stop about two seconds later, as I almost barrelled of the edge of the world: there was a sheer, sudden drop barely an inch from my feet. What's going on with this world? I glanced up briefly, wondering if there was even a sky up there, and saw a series of spotlights up there, shining down on us.

I vaguely remember hearing someone quoting a line to me, something about 'all the world's a stage', and I thought that summed up this place pretty perfectly.

Not the time to be thinking about that, Yayaka! I cursed myself for getting distracted, and had a quick look around. To my right, the unicycle clowns were still wheeling around, but some of them seemed to have noticed just how much me and the badly-painted puppet stuck out, compared to everything else in the world, and were slowly coming towards us. To the left, the town buildings seemed to disappear sharply, but the green floor and blue sky continued, with no danger in sight.

Putting on a burst of speed, I charged, wanting to get out of the town as quickly as I could. I kept my grip on the badly-painted puppet's hand (I should give it a name… I'll just call it 'Puppet', I don't really have time to think up something better) as I pulled it along behind me. A bunch of origami cranes I hadn't noticed before, fluttered up in a flurry, to get away from us as we tore away from the town.

The further away we got, the more details I noticed about the world. Like the sky for example. It wasn't just flat blue, and didn't have a natural gradient to it, like the real world, or even any Pure Illusion worlds I'd been to before: this one was kinda unique. Okay, it might still be blue, but it was constructed entirely out of patches of fabric and strips of ribbon, all sewn together. It carried on like that in an arc over us, reaching to the spotlight-suns in the sky. They moved too, as we ran away from the town, like a recurring background in an old cartoon, like they someone was winding a handle, and they were scrolling along, over and over again. All of the blue patches were uniquely decorated too, some had clouds embroidered neatly onto them, a few had white cotton balls glued to them to represent clouds, others seemed to be made up of two shades of blue strips woven together in a checkerboard pattern, one had a sun with sunglasses painted on it… and one had what looked like a clothing tag still attached to it. Although it was kinda funny seeing the sky seemingly announce it was 'DRY CLEAN ONLY' over and over again, it nearly stopped me in my tracks the first time around, just because I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

The more we ran, the more I wondered if the stage had an 'other end' to it, or if this whole world was some weird hand-made treadmill. If it was the latter, that would explain why none of the unicycle clowns seemed to have disappeared, maybe they'd dropped off the face of the world. Could that happen to us if we're not careful?

"We've found the runaways! Destroy them!"

DO-DOOM!

"Crapping hell!" I exclaimed, letting go of Puppet's hand, startled by the sudden appearance of a rocket that slammed into the ground two inches from me. Scared, by both my thought about the treadmill world, and the fact we'd been found, I turned back to look at Puppet. It was sitting pretty much where I'd left it. Why aren't you moving? Don't you care we're under attack here?!

"Come on! You wanna get destroyed?! Run with me!" I called back to it. I hadn't known Puppet for too long, but I felt a little attached to it already. I mean, it did save my life earlier, but… it felt like a little more than that to me.

It was a relief to see Puppet get up and run away from a rocket, which just crashed (DO-DOOM!) right where it was sitting barely a second ago. Heck, it was kinda nice to have it running alongside me. It's a bit like I was here with Toto or Yuyu again. Where the hell is, she? Well, I guess with this place looking like it was pretty much one-way, it wouldn't be too long until we found out…

DO-DOOM! The assault of rockets continued as we ran along the world, and a horrible thought occurred to me. It can't be endless, can it? As if the world could read my mind, there was a click, and all of a sudden, the land in front of us tilted upwards sharply. It nearly broke my pace, and I almost fell face-first into the hill, which would have given the rockets an easy target. But I'm not going down that easy! Determined, I ran up the hill, taking short steps, so I could keep my speed up. Whoever was firing the rockets seemed to be taking a different tactic now, aiming for where I was going to be, instead of aiming where I was a moment before. It nearly threw me off a couple of times, but I was able to dodge them okay. I even looked back a couple of times to check on Puppet, and saw they were doing just as well as I was. For someone this world considers faulty, they seem to be holding up.

The rain of rockets continued, as the land became a jagged zigzag of mountains.

DO-DOOM! DO-DOOM!

"Is this meant to be difficult?" I shouted, feeling cocky. I wasn't sure anyone would hear me, but there were a couple of announcements from nowhere, and the rockets seemed to be under someone's control, so I'd guess we were being watched at the very least.

DO-DOOM! DO-DOOM!

Going downhill between the 'predictive' rocket strikes was almost like doing a slalom course on some of the skiing games I saw in the arcade, when I was trying to find games Yuyu could play. Considering how well I was doing here; I was starting to wish I'd suggested trying them out, even if Yuyu might have problems with the controls, I'd probably have won them, no trouble.

DO-DOOM! DO-DOOM!

DO-DONK!

'Donk?' The sound came from behind me. Crap, Puppet didn't get hit, did it? I didn't quite want to look around, knowing that doing so would mean I'd risk getting hit myself, or at least running into a rocket, but I had to know Puppet was okay. It was a relief to see that was, indeed the case, but that didn't stop the sight of the puppet with a bright blue toy rocket embedded in its left hand any weirder. It caught that? I had to admit, I was impressed. Hell, it made me smirk. These idiots have nothing on us!

"Is that the best you can do?!" I yelled up, taunting whoever was watching us.

Clearly, it wasn't. Or at least I've managed to annoy them enough to change tactic entirely. The stage clanked and clicked again, becoming entirely flat, and a brick wall thudded down at one end of the stage, and directly behind, caging us. Me and puppet ground to a halt, waiting for whatever this world would throw at us next.

In this case, literally.

From out of the dark void below the spotlights, what looked like a stuffed animal with a comically oversized head was tossed onto the stage. I wanted to look off to the side to see who'd chucked it at us, when it sprung to life. It wobbled around, uncertainly, probably thrown off balance by its forced entrance. It rubbed a thin arm against its head.

"Ouch… That wasn't the dramatic entrance I was hoping for…" It mumbled. Suddenly, it perked up, as if remembering where it was and faced us. The first thing that struck me was how big its eyes were. They gave me the impression of an overly-curious kid with their nose pressed up against a fishbowl, staring at the fish inside. The rest of it however, seemed pretty normal, a brown body with a slightly lighter brown belly, although I had trouble deciding whether it was a cat or a bear.

"They haven't even bothered decorating properly for our epic battle!" the cat-bear exclaimed, holding an arm out dramatically to the 'DRY CLEAN ONLY' label on the 'sky'. It clapped twice, as it gave an order. "Hello! We need a new backdrop here!"

Instantly, the fabric sky rolled itself up from the bottom, and rose into the shadows of the world above. In its place… was nothing but boxes of junk (which wouldn't have looked out of place in Hidaka's lab) hiding amongst crisscross wooden scaffolding that the previous background must have been resting against, so it wouldn't fall flat onto the stage.

The cat-bear waited for a while, still dramatically gesturing to the wooden scaffolding, but nothing happened. After an awkward silence, it yelled, "FINE! We shall fight here, Runaways! My name is Trouble Yama," it said, with a flourishing bow. "And today, I'll gain my master's favour, by handing you over to her. Prepare yourselves!"

With that, Trouble Yama (I'll just call it Yama), spread his arms out, almost like he was going to do star jumps. It honestly wouldn't have surprised me if that was the case, but unfortunately for me, it was nothing that peaceful.

There were tiny fizzes and pops in the air all around me and Puppet, as specks of floating dust, sparked and blazed to life. Fire! I instantly jumped to alertness, trying not to freak out, and ended up backing into Puppet, who stood and watched the whole thing without acting. You're made of friggin' wood! How can you not be scared of this?!

The ghostly blue flickers of fire began to gather around Yama, becoming a burning aura of power. His bulging eyes were glowing, as if someone had flicked a switch and turned some lightbulbs on.

"Let's see how you handle my fireball ramming attack!" Yama said. The cat-bear hopped in place a couple of times, as if trying to make sure even his feet had a fiery aura, before he charged. It took me longer than I would have liked to get myself to move, my brain still seemed stuck somewhere between being frozen in fear, and alert in alarm.

"Get down!" I said, shoving Puppet away, as I awkwardly tried to dive away from Yama's attack. My scramble to get out of the way wasn't quite as effective as it could have been. My steel-capped boots seemed to catch the heat pretty well, to the point of it felt like my flesh would melt into them if I didn't remove them in a hurry. The instant I was able to, I tried to wrench them off before that could happen. I wanted to check on my puppet companion, but I didn't really want to look away from the enemy that was on fire, and was probably about to charge again. Part of me was hoping that maybe Yama would just flat-out burn up, and get defeated by its own attack, but the fur on his body didn't seem so much as singed. Must be immune…

Yama had reached the other end of the stage, and stopped in his tracks, before he turned on the spot and ran for Puppet. At first, I wondered what the hell he was doing, as I was still struggling with one of my boots, so I would have been the easier target… Or that's what I thought, but Puppet was just flat on the floor, not even moving. The blue toy rocket was still clasped in its left hand.

"What are you doing, you idiot?! You're gonna get hit!" If this damn boot wasn't refusing to come off my foot, I would have gotten up already and tried to pull Puppet out of the way, but that wasn't happening. Even if I hobbled over now, by the time I got there, both of us would end up getting hurt. But it reacts to orders… In fact, that's the only time it seems to move. "Get out of there!" I shouted at Puppet, hoping my observation was right.

Upon hearing that last sentence, Puppet's head twitched, and it reacted. It stood up quickly and ran over to the opposite end of the stage the cat-bear was standing… and stopped. Its head twitched a few more times, like a curious bird, before taking a few steps closer to the wooden scaffolding. "What the hell are you doing?!" You're still a sitting duck! "I said get out of there!"

"Easy target!" The cat-bear purred, the blue aura around him flickered, as if reacting to his enthusiasm. He leapt towards Puppet, in a superhero pose, looking like a blue meteor streaking across the sky. Annoyingly, it was now that my boot decided to come off, giving me no time to rush over and help Puppet.

"MOVE YOUR ASS!" I screamed, willing the damn puppet to get out of the way. Puppet's head turned a fraction in my direction, as if to show it was listening, and gave me a very small nod. In my anger, the gesture confused me. But when Yama was far too close for my liking, Puppet finally got out of the way, taking a couple of almost comical sidesteps.

"Wh—" Yama's question was suddenly cut off as the cat-bear's massive head burst through the wall, shattering the brick in a cloud of russet dust. Yama pulled away, and staggered backwards a few steps, clutching his head. "Pooks! That really hurt…"

I raised my eyebrows. "Okay, I gotta admit, that was a smart idea," I said to Puppet, grinning. Don't ask me how exactly, but as it tilted its head at me, I got the feeling if it had a mouth, it'd be grinning too. Do I have a bond with it already? Almost as if in reply to that, I felt a spark of fondness in my chest. But it also made me frown a little. It feels familiar to me… Why?

I shook my head. Not the time to worry about that, Yayaka. "Let's go!" I said to Puppet, ducking through the gaping gap in the brick wall. Puppet tagged along behind me.

"Hey, wait! That's cheating!" Yama said, one hand reaching out as if to try and call us back.

"Screw you!" I said. Puppet may not have had a mouth, but it clearly agreed with me, as it chucked the toy rocket at the cat-bear's massive head. I smirked, and turned to look at the world that had opened up to us…

My feet were a little tender after being burnt by my boots, so they seemed to be a little sensitive to the ground. The change from smoothly-painted green to soft wood was a little odd. It felt rough and a little dry, but thankfully wasn't quite enough to agitate me. Actually, I was kinda glad there didn't appear to be any paint on the floor, this would be a lot easier to run on.

Unlike the section of the world where we were trapped between brick walls, there was no wooden scaffolding to be seen here. There was a new background entirely in its place, something that wouldn't have been out of place in a children's popup book. It looked a bit like how I'd picture the inside of an ancient colosseum to be, only instead of people being here to watch the fight sitting in the stands, the whole space seemed to be taken up by an orchestra, ready to play.

Also, much to my annoyance, much like the place we were just in, this place had a brick wall at the end of it too. I could probably use my last rocket to destroy it, but I didn't want to risk it. If there was another wall behind it, there'd be no way for me to get through. I could try my explosive wires, but I still didn't really know how to activate them.

"Hey, can you bust through this wall?" I asked Puppet, hoping they could come up with a solution. After all, they seemed to find a weak spot in the other one… It walked over to the wall, and its head slowly moved, as if it was scanning every inch. Eventually, it turned to me and shook its head. Damn… "What about the background?"

Puppet turned to look at the paper orchestra. Its head tilted to the side, and its left wrist seemed to twitch a little, as if it was thinking about it. I frowned as I noticed something else about its arm. "Your hand is redder…" I said. In fact, now I got a better look, the red on all of its limbs seemed to have spread, just a little bit. That's weird. We haven't come into any contact with red paint, and the colour far too glossy and stained to be brick dust… Again, I felt a little spark in me, and I looked up at Puppet's face "…do I know you?"

Before I could get any form of answer though, a familiar voice interrupted. "CORNERED AGAIN!" I hunched over, making myself a smaller target, and preparing myself to move out of the way, as Yama appeared, having followed us through the gap his head punched in the wall… Only this time, all we could really see of him was the head. The plush brown body was gone, replaced by… Something I wanted to say reminded me of Buu a little. It was basically a colourful-square robot body, but instead of wheels or wires like Buu, there seemed to be all kinds of tools poking out of various holes all along the side. Things like power drills, screwdrivers, hammers, and a couple of poles, sharpened at the ends into makeshift spears. I wondered where the hell he got all of that, before remembering the boxes of junk behind the scaffolding. It would have been kind of terrifying to see, as it was basically a UFO with robot arms full of tools, all of which could pretty easily take either of us out, being unarmed, but the effect was ruined, by the stupid bug-eyed head, sitting precariously on top of it.

"This time, there shall be no escape for either of you!" Drills whirred and all the other tools in its arms were raised into the sky… which seemed to be falling. The spotlight sun was blocked, as something massive fell past it, and the stage was bathed in shadow.

"Get down!" I ordered, putting a hand on Puppet's back and shoving it to the ground.

"Victory for Trouble Yama!" the cat-bear declared, before it was promptly squashed.

DO-DOOM!

That was a lot louder than the rockets that were shot at us before… And as I slowly lifted my head, and saw the giant toy dog that had flattened Yama, it wasn't hard to see why. It was nowhere near as big as the Ray, if you had them side-by-side, but it still took up quite a bit of space on this part of the stage. The orchestra in the background, came to life, arms and instruments moving as if a thousand invisible hands were tugging on paper tabs, making them move back and forth. And they were playing… Something I actually knew. I'm not sure where I heard it before, maybe back at Asclepius, I remember the Head Priest sometimes had the radio on while everyone was working, and one piece that kept coming on over and over again was "the nutcracker".

"You blasted mutt!" Yama's muffled voice came from under the dog as it tried to shout over the music "This was meant to be my victory!"

"The master's had quite enough of you." The dog growled. "You've been given enough chances, and you keep messing up." The dog sat up, revealing a pill-shaped body, and legs which looked like balls all connected by string that ran inside them. The string was visible for a moment, before the dog stood up, revealing Yama embedded in the wooden floor. "She's sick of it, and sick of you! So instead, she's sent someone she can rely on to do the job." The dog turned away from the cat-bear, whose broken robot body made me think of a dead spider, and glared at me and Puppet with wild, rolling eyes. "You've met your end runaways. I, the bounty hunter Mad Boundy, will be the one to hand you over!"

The instant the last word was out of its mouth its ball-limbs completely flattened, only to expand a second later, as Mad Boundy the dog sprang far up into the void of the sky…

I blinked, confused. I doubted the enemy was gone, just like that, but with the sheer force it seemed to shoot itself into the air with, it didn't seem like it was going to come back down any time soon.

"You might want to move…" Yama said. Still bewildered, I looked down at the flattened cat-bear. "Look, I'm giving you advice, just take it, okay? I hate this damn mutt. You take her out, and I'll leave you alone."

Yama's face suddenly seemed to grow dark, and looking up, I saw Mad Boundy falling back to the stage again. I tried to shove Puppet further along the ground, out of range, and crawled after her.

Her? I'm… Not sure where that came from, but it made sense to me somehow, to refer to Puppet as female.

DO-DOOM!

As Mad Boundy crashed back down to the stage, I felt her pill-shaped body touch my feet lightly. Cold metal… That's gonna be hard to take out… I made a mental note of that though, before pulling my feet under me, ready to move again, at the same time the toy dog stood. Good thing I did, I heard Boundy growling, and looked up to see the dog shaking something in her mouth, which looked suspiciously like a cartoon bomb. I grabbed the wrist of Puppet's mis-coloured arm, and tried to pull her out the way as I tried to get to the other end of the it was my imagination, but it felt a little loose. I'd better not rip her arm off by mistake…

Boundy dropped the bomb, just as Puppet and I made it under the dog's pill-shaped body. There was a burst of orange light from behind, highlighting everything around us, and a smell of smoke in the air. Okay, short-range explosion… That's easy enough to deal with. Good to know.

"Drat!" Mad Boundy cursed. It hopped along to the other end of the stage, before shooting up into the blackness again. If this was anything like before, there'd be a while before she came crashing back down. I turned to Trouble Yama. "Can you help us?"

"Pfff, no thanks." The cat-bear replied.

"Why not? You said you hated her, right?"

"Yes, but if I'm the one to take her out, the master will have me hunted down like you two, and as you've seen, I'm not exactly the luckiest puppet in the world."

"Tch…" I didn't like the response, but I could understand Trouble Yama's logic. I'd been in a similar position before at Asclepius after all. I turned to Puppet. "Any ideas?"

The puppet stared at me for a lot longer than I would have liked. It took me a while to realise that it couldn't really answer. My question was too vague, and it didn't have a mouth. I mentally facepalmed. I don't know how this damn world works… Defective puppets are chased by bounty hunters, ordered around by a 'master' behind the scenes, and stuffed animals can set themselves on fire without becoming a pile of ash … But if a plushie can do that… I felt a little spark of hope. "Have you got any special powers? Or weapons?"

Puppet's head tilted to the side, and looked down at its left arm. The hand twitched, as its fist clenched, as if it was annoyed. Maybe it was my imagination too, but I thought I saw black smoke leaking from it. It seemed to spread all over Puppet— Wait that's not smoke. That was when I noticed the shadow from above, as it fell over Puppet like a curtain, signalling Mad Boundy coming back.

"DOWN!" I shouted, slamming a hand on its back and shoving it to the ground again. There wasn't any time to get to a safer place. We'll just have to take the hit…

DO-DOOM!

I felt the giant dog's body press against the stiff dragonhide, agitating my ribs, and terrifying me for a second it was going to land full-force. I was waiting for my ribs to crack, and for my body to be nothing more than a messy red stain, as I was crushed under a giant metal dog, only for it to hop back up again.

"OUCH!" Mad Boundy yelped, before jumping back up into the darkness above the stage.

I lifted my head, confused, and saw one of Trouble Yama's weapons sticking up from his embedded form in the stage. Maybe it was chance, or maybe the cat-bear had decided to help us, I had no idea. Either way, I'll take the opportunity he's given us to try and come up with a plan.

I pulled Puppet up from the floor with me, as we ran to the opposite side of the stage, passing over Yama as we did so. The drill hurt it… I stopped, and Puppet halted too.

"You mind if we borrow these?" I asked him. I'm not sure why I voiced the question out loud, I didn't bother waiting for Yama to answer, before I reached down for his raised drill arm. Even if I got my explosive wires to work, there's no guarantee it'll be enough to damage Boundy...

"How dare you?! That's mine!" Trouble Yama said, as I wrenched the drill arm free.

"You want that dog taken out? Me and my friend need this." I growled. Actually, that's a good point, it's not much good if I'm the only one with a weapon. "I need this, too", I said as I reached down for another robotic limb to pass over to Puppet, and ended up yanking out one of the makeshift spears.

"You're not exactly smart, are you? How's your friend going to hold that?" Yama said. I couldn't see the cat-bear's face, but I pictured him rolling his eyes.

I opened my mouth to tell him to shut up, only to realise it was a very good question. And not one I had time to answer, going by the shadow that was quickly starting to take up the stage.

"Over here!" I shouted to Puppet, as I lead us to the only side of the stage that was still brightly lit. The paper orchestra's music got a little louder, as we ran over to them. Puppet seemed to slow as we neared them, as if only just noticing they were there, now they were playing the music.

"Are you conspiring with that Troublesome Yama?" Boundy barked, before landing back on the stage (DO-DOOM!) "He's not the only one with friends here!" The dog's eyes rolled in its head, which suddenly darted forward with a loud rattle. Boundy's mouth opened, and out spilled five of those unicycle clowns from that town we landed in when we first came here. They still had menacing grins pasted on their faces, and their arms raised, with splayed fingers, ready to attack as they made a beeline for me and Puppet. Boundy jumped back up into the space above the stage, probably leaving her minions to do the work.

I raised both my weapons, ready to attack, when I noticed the drill arm had a loose wire dangling from it. Thinking fast, I grabbed one of Puppet's arms, and tried to tie the wire around the weapon and the arm. There wasn't much to work with, so I could only do one loop, and knotted it as tightly as I could. Honestly, I doubted it'd hold up, but at least Puppet had a weapon now… and just in time.

Two of the clowns tilted forwards, and slapped the ground with their arms. Wheels revved, as they launched into the air, jumping at me. I thrust the spear-arm forwards, piercing one of them in the face. It caved inward, and the rest of the body ballooned out, just before bursting into a cloud of confetti. My vision was obscured by the rain of glittering colours. Where the hell is the second one? I waved my spear arm around, aimlessly, hoping that I'd somehow hit it, if I waved it around enough.

Didn't work. Sharp teeth sank into my shoulder, and I heard a crunch. I tried hard to bite back a curse a lot stronger than I'd normally use, but I'm pretty sure part of it managed to slip out. Thankfully, the clown had latched its jaws onto the shoulder of my arm that wasn't holding a weapon, so I could use my other arm to try and slap it off. Wasn't working. The teeth dug in further, and the pain spread through me, like a crack in shattering glass. A pained noise worked its way up from my throat. I dropped the spear-arm and it clattered to the ground. I knelt down, still trying to rip the clown from my shoulder, but it just wouldn't let go. My vision was starting to go blurry, so scrabbling around with my free hand on the ground to try and reach for the weapon, but I wasn't having any luck.

However, there was still one weapon at my disposal. I doubted my wires would do much, and there was no way in hell I was gonna try for activating the explosive mode when the enemy was right on top of me. But if I can just get it to loosen its grip, then maybe...

I tried to shift my arm out the way, and shoot directly upwards with my grappling wires. I hit, and to mine and the clown's surprise, as the tiny grappling hook pierced through its face and out the other end, it ballooned outwards, much like the last one, and exploded into confetti. Although I was glad to have taken out both of the ones attacking me, it didn't really do anything for the condition I was in. A twinge of pain ran through my right side, and now it felt like the clown's teeth had almost snapped my shoulder, and the only noise that I could hear from my left ear was a sharp whistle, that wasn't going away any time soon. But I can't stop now... I need to keep going...

I turned to Puppet, to see her just standing there, with the drill-arm still attached to its regular arm. The unicycle clowns were all latched on, biting down hard, two of them on Puppet's legs, and like me earlier, one on the shoulder. I could see red bleeding under the black paint where the shoulder-clown had sunk its teeth in. Is that blood? I need to help...

I walked over to Puppet... or I tried to, I'd ended up stumbling and falling flat on the ground, and sent a jolt of pain through my ribs. My feet were still kinda sensitive from the burnt boots earlier, too. In addition to the new bite mark on my shoulder, my world was quickly becoming a huge web of hurt. Somehow, I didn't think getting up and trying to fight again would be too good of an idea. But Puppet's under attack...

"Why aren't you fighting them?" I asked Puppet. Other than her looking at me, I got no answer to that. But you're listening to me... You've listened to me the moment we started working together... "You don't need to follow orders all the time, you can act on your own, too!"

A part of me regretted saying that, the instant the words left my mouth. Puppet wasn't my only audience member after all. The clowns attacking Puppet all moved at once. As if their chins were connected to strings, they all sharply pulled upwards, and looked at me. They let go of Puppet, abandoning her, and wheeled their way over to attack me instead. Going to attack the easier target... It was an effective tactic. One that'd probably take me out of combat soon, too. I still have both my grappling wires, and one rocket left, but the rocket would be pretty difficult to aim from my position on the floor. I wasn't sure I could really get myself to roll over and push myself up with my feet either.

My left arm didn't quite seem to cooperate with what I told it to do any more, as I tried to take aim with my grappling wires. Where my right hand found my weapon at my hips easily, my left hand seemed to shake all around, like a fly trapped under a glass. I managed to shoot one wire at a clown, causing it to pop into a colourful cloud, but by the time my wire came back to me, the other two were pretty much on me. Sharp, needle-like teeth stabbed into my arms, and I yelled with pain.

"Damn it! Get off! Let go of me!" I tried to shake my arms, and rid them of the clowns, but they wouldn't shift. Although their teeth were thin, I could swear they were trying to grind down my bones. Can't fight them without my arms... It was pathetic. I'd come this far, gotten to the right world, and now my arms were being eaten by clowns.

Images of Cocona, Papika, Toto and Nyunyu flashed through my mind. I've failed them... I can't defeat my shadow in this state... I'm sorry, guys... I really tried... I thought of Yuyu, and felt a wave of guilt. I said you could come with me, and now you're trapped, all alone in Pure Illusion... The shadow's in this world, and it can find you and kill you, and it's all my fault...

"I'm sorry, Yuyu... I'm so sorry... I should have sent you home... Aahhh!" I hissed as the clown that was chomping my right arm had given up with that, and started clawing at the dragonhide repairs on my armour, as if it knew that I was even weaker under there. Small teeth claws began to shred my armour. Once again, the pain all over felt like I was a piece of shattering glass. Each tiny impact was another fragment of my life falling away. My vision was blurry and dark, and my brain quickly growing delirious.

Tiny bright specks danced around behind my eyes, as more slashes of pain tore through me, becoming too much... And at the same time, it was fading away... I thought I could vaguely feel things being moved around me. Had the clowns left me to die? Something clopped against the stage, like a horse's hooves. Suddenly my view changed. Almost everything as dark, but a light was tilted into view. I think... I think I was being held... Puppet... My mind was fading. I couldn't see any more... But I could feel something. Thumping. Rhythmic... Familiar to me... An image of my transformed self, holding a silver-haired girl in a flooding temple... "You have a heart..."


Authors note: What's going to happen to Yayaka? And What's the deal with Puppet? Find out next time, in the next exciting episode of Pure Feedback!

But yes, to take things a bit more seriously, some of you may have made a few notes or guesses about Puppet. I'm not sure if I made Certain Plans and Things too obvious, or too vague, but I'll say for certain you'll find out more about them next time. I'm gonna have to end the chapter here, because I'm not sure how long the next part will be word-wise, and I feel the patient people still sticking with this have waited more than long enough for a chapter. I'll warn you now though, progress may slow again quite badly after this next chapter (or maybe even during it). I've had at least 3 different endings in mind for this fic for a while, and I'm still not entirely sure which direction I want to take it. Some of them may need a little building up on, so it might be a while. I was planning to have this whole fic finished by Cocona's birthday, which I saw on Reddit is August 17th, but at the rate I'm going, it might be lucky if the chapter AFTER the next one was posted by then…

Oh, and the video game that inspired this world: to anyone who guessed Dynamite Headdy, you are correct! I took a few notes from both the Japanese and English releases of the game, like the names of Trouble Yama (A mix of English Trouble Bruin, and Japanese Maruyama). Did you know the bosses in the Japanese version of Dynamite Headdy speak/have text-boxes, whereas in the English version, almost all speech is cut, minus the tutorial guys and the end of the game? Weird, isn't it?

But yes, next chapters or so may be a while. If you're still sticking with this fic, I hope you're enjoying it and thanks for your patience with my slow progress at the moment.