Chapter 2: The Land of Dolls and Sweets
The cold winds bit at his exposed skin, his purple hair tossed around. He had nothing left – they were all dead, and if the enemy found him, he would be dead too.
If the blood loss from the wound in his shoulder didn't kill him first. He continued to clutch at his jacket over his chest, trying to stop the bleeding, but he knew he needed medical attention.
He wasn't sure he would find it.
Finally he collapsed in front of a dead tree, his weakened body refusing another step. He clutched his sword close as he spied a soft light approaching him. Were they the enemy's lanterns? Then there was no point… he wasn't strong enough to stand up again and they'd have muskets…
"To what color am I dyed? The size of the dyed thing changes because of the difference of the dyed color."
The ethereal female voice he heard echoing around him made him assume he was being drawn into the afterlife. But as his vision began to blur he saw an altogether different silhouette – sleek and feminine. As she grew closer, he could see a woman in a long, fur-lined white coat and hat, black gloves along her hands and white boots upon her feet. The winds seemed to treat her far more kindly as her long pink hair seemed to dance around her instead of flapping around.
As he watched her lips moving, singing her strange song, he recognized he hadn't in fact imagined the voice at all. Nor did it belong to a ghost… this was a real person, walking his way.
"To what color am I dyed? The color to be dyed changes under the influence of the private life."
The woman continued her approach and he thought he could see a light glow upon her features. He tried to call out to her as she grew close, but only managed a grotesque cough.
"The color for which I hope is a color with high brightness. I want to become beautiful mind. I want to become it."
She knelt at his side, and all he could truly see anymore was her soft, sky blue eyes and her stoic smile. "Mortal, what do you wish for?"
Finally he forced himself to talk. "I wish… I wish to survive…"
She laughed, as if the chaos around them meant nothing to her. "A practical wish, but you can tell me more than that. If you survive, what do you wish to do?"
He'd never been a man meant for battle – he'd only wanted to improve his craft, to make children smile and improve other's lives. But that was not a life for a man born of his low station, and thus out of options to support his sister, he became a man of war…
"I… I want to make them happy… everyone… I want to build for them and make their lives better…"
She nodded her head. "Then come with me. I can take you to a place where you can attain your desire. But you must understand the price of coming with me. You may lose everything if you lose sight of your true self."
He felt darkness closing in upon him but he understood what he was speaking to. And it gave him a glimmer of hope to realize something so wonderful could truly exist.
"Take me away… oh faerie…"
"Dark eyes, white skin, this is a doll who can sing… his passion never stops, the soul of the doll is shivering…"
Miku heard a familiar voice singing in her room as she finally awoke. She was aware of pain in her bandaged arm and winced as it shot through her limb as she tried to move it. She wiggled her feet, feeling a soft pair of slippers on them. She turned her head to see Gakupo at her vanity, his back to her as he focused on some task of his own, singing to himself along the way.
"However, I'm just an illusory singing machine. I even can't hug you with my own hands. I want to sing more and more for you…this is my only hope."
"Gakupo?" Miku called out to him.
At that he swung around to face Miku at once. "It's good to see you safe, my dear! I must admit I was rather worried about you when your mother told me what happened!"
Miku rested her hand to the bandages. "Where is she now?"
As if on cue, the raven-haired woman ran into the room. "Miku! Miku, oh my poor girl, what were you doing last night?!"
Before her daughter could explain, her mother had thrust the covers away and started to examine Miku's arm carefully. "Putting that war nurse training back to use again?" Gakupo joked.
Miku's mother tugged back at the bandages and examined the skin carefully. Miku winced again as she saw the scratches. "Fortunately, the cuts aren't too deep… you must have passed out when you bumped your head…"
She wrapped up the bandages once more and rested her daughter lightly in the bed. "Now honestly, Miku, you must tell me – why were you up last night and how did you come to be injured?"
At once the odd sights flooded her memories and she struggled for the words. "Mother, some sort of a crash woke me up last night… my bedroom door had been opened from the inside. When I entered the living room, I saw… I saw an army of MICE! They were chasing my nutcracker up the Christmas tree!"
Already she saw a familiar doubtful face. "Miku, this isn't the time for stories. What really happened?"
She steeled herself to continue. "I promise, it's true! I threw my shoe at the Mouse King to save the nutcracker, then when I tried to follow them to see how they got into our house, I tripped over the Mouse Queen and fell into the cabinet!"
Her mother let out a sigh of frustration. "All right… it's obvious that you must have been sleepwalking last night."
"But mother-!"
"That would explain the mess in the living room – all the Christmas ornaments were on the floor, shattered… you must have bumped the tree while you were wandering around and your shoe fell off – "
Miku tried one last time to argue the truth of the matter. "No, the nutcracker was throwing the ornaments at the mice! They were chasing after him!"
" – and then while you wandered the dining room you ran into the cabinet. That would explain the lack of serious wounds."
Her daughter fell utterly silent. Miku was so certain of what she'd seen but as her mother laid out the more realistic explanation, it was difficult for Miku to see any other possibilities. Her nutcracker was a toy, not a person, and surely so many mice would have caused more of a stir in the home. Even as the events had transpired Miku had been doubting her own eyes – so that must have been part of the dream as well.
"There, does that sound better? Just make sure you leave your door locked next time and you probably won't hurt yourself before you wake up."
Miku's mother gently kissed her daughter on the forehead. "I'm so glad you aren't too seriously hurt. I already sent Mikuo down to the chemist to get you some laudanum so the pain is a little more bearable."
She lightly fluffed her daughter's hair. "And just this once, I'll get the breakfast tray and bring you something to eat."
And just like that, her mother was gone, Miku already beginning to dismiss the odd events that had transpired around her… until she noticed the strange look Gakupo was giving her. "I'm sorry to have worried you over a bout of sleepwalking, Gakupo…" she apologized.
He shook his head. "It sounds like a most fantastic story, that's for certain," he said, regaining his normal composure at once.
He turned towards the vanity for a moment, turning back to reveal Miku's nutcracker in his hands, the jaw completely repaired. "Now he can nurse you back to health!"
Miku laughed in spite of herself as Gakupo handed the nutcracker back to her. "You must have really worried about him to have such a daring dream as that… taking on an army of mice without a thought for yourself!"
"Well it felt so scary in the dream!" Miku said, "It was so strange though, he looked so much more… alive… even though he was still just a doll."
She ran her hands along the nutcracker's silky blue hair – even though it still felt artificial, it was so soft. "Well, I'm glad none of it was real and that mice aren't really trying to take this little toy."
Miku looked to her godfather and saw him staring at the castle in the corner of her room. "You know, I never did tell you the story about this castle, did I?"
He wandered over and turned the key and once more the little clockwork people came back to life. "I told you about the King and Queen and their daughter, yes?"
"Princess Pirlipat, I remember," Miku added, wondering what had overtaken Gakupo so suddenly.
"I didn't tell you about the Mouse King and Queen, did I?"
At those names, Miku shivered. "Gakupo, you're just… using the names from my dream!"
He smiled slyly at her. "A little blonde boy mouse and girl mouse in regal clothes?"
At that, Miku's mouth hung agape. How had he known!?
His eyes turned back to the castle. "You see, those mice caused quite a stir in the kingdom, stealing sweets and luxuries wherever they went from every doll and human there…"
"Wait…" Miku interrupted, "Dolls? You're not telling me this kingdom had… living toys?"
At that her godfather released another rich laugh. "Well by now you've surely understood this is a magical kingdom, right? It's that Land of Dolls and Sweets after all!"
He walked over to Miku and tapped her nose lightly. "No more interruptions! Anyway…"
As Gakupo continued, Miku began to study the castle more closely, trying to get an idea of the cast of characters that were populating his odd little story.
"But they grew too bold when they tricked the young Princess Pirlipat into allowing them into the King's cellars, allowing them to make off with his prized strawberry syrup intended for his favorite shortcake. And so he set an entire army upon them, chasing every mouse out of the entire kingdom with his clockwork army, built by the inventor and toymaker Drosselmeyer."
"But the mice were far more powerful than he anticipated, waging war to be allowed back in. And they cursed the name of the Princess who betrayed them to the King, swearing they would eventually make their way back into the castle and punish her…"
Miku was about to shout that the Princess seemed to have committed no crimes, but she remembered Gakupo's reminder to stay quiet. Instead she clutched her nutcracker closer. "And one day, they finally made good on their promise. All at once, the Princess found herself under a cruel enchantment, transformed into a grotesque living doll, frightening all who looked upon her with her wretched appearance… The King chose to blame not his own rash actions, but Drosselmeyer for this crime and tasked him to restore her on pain of death. In the end, it was not Drosselmeyer who saved her, but his nephew… only for the boy's kindness to become his undoing…"
Before he could continue his story, Miku's mother finally entered carrying a breakfast tray. "Oh I leave you two alone for just a few moments and Gakupo's already weaving another fantastic tale about his toys for you…"
The tray settled in Miku's lap. "Here, Mikuo brought me the laudanum, I'll just stick right here on your nightstand. Just get a good breakfast before you take it, okay?"
Miku began to pick at the fresh breakfast sausage, but she found herself watching the toy castle one more time. "Gakupo, which one is Drosselmeyer's nephew?"
He turned to look at Miku's nutcracker. "If you're very good, I'll tell you the rest of the story. But Drosselmeyer's nephew is not in the castle."
For a moment, Gakupo looked over his shoulder and watched as Miku's mother departed. He walked close to Miku's bed and knelt by her side. "Now Miku, let's suppose that dream you had last night were to be real," he said in a low voice, "You attacked the King and Queen of Mic. Do you really intend to protect your Nutcracker no matter what?"
She drew the nutcracker close to her body, staring into his eyes. In spite of his frozen expression, she was certain she could still imagine his animated face just as he had been last night. She remembered how desperate he'd become trying to protect himself. And in spite of her fear of the mice… all she'd wanted to do was save him.
Miku lovingly stroked his silk hair. "Of course I do."
Gakupo gave her an odd smile on hearing her response. "Dear Miku, you will have to suffer much if you are to look after Nutcracker, for the Mouse King and Queen will pursue him in every land and across any border. I cannot help him - only you can do that. Be faithful and strong."
The laudanum helped Miku's pain but the effects of the opiate left her drifting in and out of consciousness during the day. Occasionally she heard Mikuo playing with his toy soldiers again. At one point he came in to check on his sister and her nutcracker, who she'd left on her bed. He apologized for breaking the toy, and Miku guessed he even felt responsible for her sleepwalking fit.
Whenever she was awake, she'd stare at her nutcracker. It felt somewhat childish to keep a toy on her bed like this, but something about him didn't add up. So many strange events seemed to follow him around… she'd accepted the truth about her sleepwalking so readily but then she still remembered that odd moment when he seemed to have spoken to her…
"Oh Nutcracker, why did those mice want to hurt you so?"
That evening, Miku locked her door properly before she fell asleep again… but this time she was awoken by the sounds of a familiar voice.
"You miserable wooden creep! How dare you allow my dear King to come to harm!"
Miku snapped awake. The nutcracker was missing from her bed again!
"Why are you chasing me?! What have I done to you?!"
Slowly Miku turned under her sheets, looking over the side of her bed. In the back corner of her room, right next to the castle, was a bright, shimmering mouse hole. And at the foot of her bed stood her nutcracker, standing at his full height.
His body seemed a little different now – his head had shrunk to being in proportion with the rest of his body, his painted face shifting expressions to match his emotions. Yet clearly his wooden skin remained the same, and his limbs rotated as though they still possessed ball joints.
Miku shifted carefully, trying not to draw attention to herself.
"It was you who crossed us! You who tried to ruin our revenge! If we can't have the princess, we'll make you pay in her place!"
The Mouse King's voice again, "Len".
The nutcracker stood motionless for a second before he shook his head. "I've no idea what you speak of. I'm just a doll, I don't know any princess…"
Miku began to search for something, anything, she could use to deal with the mice in her room again… she spied the toy cat on the vanity…
"And now you lie to us! That's it, we'll hurt your pretty new friend if you put up a fight again!"
At that the nutcracker sounded angry. "I won't let you hurt Miku!"
He leapt from the top of the bed to the floor and Miku could hear the mice chasing him around the room. Miku quickly sat up and tried to slip to the edge of her bed, hoping to reach the toy in time…
"Give it up, Queen Rin and I have you surrounded!"
There was the nutcracker standing atop the castle, looking for somewhere to escape… at once the mice climbed the castle and laid their hands upon him. No matter how the nutcracker struggled, they maintained their powerful grip on him. "And so it ends for you…" Len said, malice in his voice, "Perhaps we'll just gnaw you to bits right now and leave the scraps for your pretty friend to find in the morning!"
Quickly Miku just barely reached her toy and wound it with speed…
"Wait! She's awake!"
All of a sudden every mouse in the room was looking at Miku and she was trying to stay brave in spite of it. And at once she tossed the toy into the center of the crowd of mice.
With the toy properly wound, it began to leap forward, making adorable mewling sounds as it did so. And fortunately for Miku, no matter how strange the two Mouse Twins were, they did seem to maintain a mouse's fear of cats.
"CAT! CAT! Run for your lives!"
The mice scattered as the toy continued to pounce on its timer. Miku saw them drop the nutcracker and she ran forward to scoop him up…
… and that's when she heard Rin's voice.
"No! I'll not allow her to cross me! You can become an ugly little doll just like him!"
Miku barely saw it coming – as the Twins crossed their tails together and waved their hands, a bright yellow and orange light shot towards Miku… yet she felt nothing but the rush of power flowing through her, her body tingling like she was being lightly pricked by pins all along her skin…
When it was done, she barely had time to react before a wooden hand grabbed hold of hers. "We have to run! Now! Through the mouse hole!"
And that's when Miku realized she was now staring at the nutcracker… and she was now proportional to his size. "EEK! What did they do to me?!"
Miku saw her bed towering over her like a grand castle, her vanity table a canopy over her. She looked back at the mice and they looked so much more menacing and dangerous now that they were the same size as her. "Oh no, I'm so small! What am I going to do!?"
"They're going to do worse if we don't go! Don't worry, Miku, I'll keep you safe!"
She looked to her nutcracker and again to the mice who began to regroup as the cat toy wound down. "Please… Miku, you saved me, now let me save you too."
She stared into the nutcracker's painted blue eyes and saw nothing but his sincerity. The two turned towards the mouse hole and ran towards the light. "You lot, after them!" Len shouted, "I don't know how she evaded our true power, but she can't escape forever!"
"If we go through the mouse hole, aren't we going even deeper into their territory?!" Miku shouted to her new companion.
She was surprised to hear him laugh in spite of everything. "That mouse hole… is a bit more complicated than you realize…"
As the light approached them ever closer, Miku held her breath, not sure what would lay in front of her. Part of herself was trying to remind her that this must be a dream, none of this could be real, and yet every one of her senses reacted to it. The solid wooden hand she was grasping, the sound of their footsteps…
… and now an even odder smell…
… a smell like sugar…
As she crossed into the light her slipper-covered feet crunched into fresh fallen snow. "Wait… we're outside?"
The light from the morning sunrise further surprised her… how was it already morning?!
The nutcracker surveyed the area. "We need to get somewhere where they can't follow our footsteps…" he murmured, "There, the snowfall in the trees is lighter… we might find some cover!"
As they dove into the trees, Miku half expected them to be coated in chocolate or made of peppermint, but that was not the case – they were perfectly normal trees. As the two of them reached hard ground, the nutcracker found his way to a small cave with white snow atop it. He and Miku hurried inside, and for several moments they listened carefully for the signs of pursuit. In the distance she thought she could hear an army moving in the distance, the shrieks of the Mouse Twins… but finally silence.
She dared to breath a moment… and then she found herself beginning to cry.
The nutcracker touched one of his wooden fingers to her cheek as the tears fell upon it. "What… what are you doing?" he asked softly.
Miku tried to dry her eyes and compose herself again. "I… I don't understand what's happening! You're alive, and then we're running for our lives… and they… they did something to me and now I can't even go home like this!"
She tried to remember the odd way they came to this place. "Even if I knew the way… how will I get back to normal? Oh, my mother is going to be so worried about me… everyone's going to be looking for me out near the house but they'll never find me in a mouse hole and…"
Her tears overwhelmed her once more as her fears clogged her thoughts. For a few moments the nutcracker didn't even speak, just sitting back and leaning against the wall. As Miku's tears finally faded, he uttered a single phrase.
"I'm sorry, Miku."
Miku took a few breaths so she could try and speak normally again. "No, please don't apologize, it's not your fault you were in danger…"
The nutcracker crossed his legs and arms in front of himself, looking up at the ceiling. "Weeeell… I don't actually know that…"
"You don't know why they're chasing you!? They definitely knew who you were!"
At that the nutcracker laughed as if Miku had told a joke. "Maybe they do, but I still don't know them! I was pretty surprised myself the first time they chased me up the Christmas tree…"
He thumped one of his wooden fists into the other, making a loud clacking noise. "AH! I meant to thank you for that! You were the one who threw the shoe, right?!"
Miku nodded her head. "I didn't know what was going on, but that rotten Len person looked like he was going to hurt you…"
The nutcracker bore a wide smile on his face, and Miku was surprised he was capable of such strong expressions now. Whatever happened to bring him to life seemed to have given him some control over his mouth, even though he still had the wooden nose and painted on cheeks.
"Well, because you did that, I was able to climb out of sight and hide and then go back to your bedroom… but… you got hurt, didn't you?"
Miku touched her arm, where the bandages still lay wrapped over her injury. "It doesn't hurt so much now…" she said, "I just tripped into a cabinet."
The nutcrackers face fell. "It seems you keep getting hurt because of me… and after you were so kind too…"
Miku recalled the odd incident in the snow-coated yard. "Ummm… did you really understand everything I said? You only spoke that one time…"
He closed his eyes… or rather, the paint that formed his eyes shrank into that appearance, like two thin black curved lines. He clearly had no eye lids to maneuver. "It was kind of weird, it was like… I was asleep for a really long time and then… I woke up? Yea… and you were talking to me! But I couldn't really move or anything…"
His eyes opened, shining like stars. "And you were really nice to me! So I tried to tell you that! Then… I think I fell back asleep after that nut broke my jaw…"
Miku blushed – her nutcracker had really been aware of all of that? "I'm sorry I didn't stop Mikuo from hurting you… I hope it didn't hurt when Gakupo fixed you up."
Again his eyes became like thin black lines. "I think I remember him… well, his voice at least. He kept talking to me, he was really nice… ah, he kept calling me something though. 'Kaito' I think."
All at once Miku realized she'd been having a long conversation with a person who had saved her life and she was treating him like a mere toy – not even addressing him properly. "Gakupo probably named you that when he created you!" Miku said, "Kaito must be your name!"
The nutcracker looked surprised. "I have a name? He named a doll?"
Miku couldn't help but laugh at his curious face. "Gakupo is definitely the sort of person to name a doll! You should have heard him talk about that castle he built for me!"
"Kaito…" he murmured, a smile spreading along his face as he said it, "My name is Kaito…"
"It's very nice to meet you, Kaito," Miku said.
But as the topic of Kaito's name resolved, Miku realized she still had no real plan of action. She didn't even know where she was, and Kaito might be utterly useless here as well given how little he seemed to grasp of what was happening around him.
"Where are we, anyway?" she asked, "I mean, it's okay if you don't know but…"
"The Land of Dolls and Sweets," Kaito said matter-of-factly.
At once Miku began to recall the story Gakupo had started to tell her about the castle in her room… hadn't he used the same name? "The Land of Dolls and Sweets?" That got her thinking. If that name was real, perhaps her castle might exist somehow as well…
"Kaito, you know where we are, even though you just woke up?" Miku asked again.
He nodded his little wooden head. "I don't think I've always been asleep... I think I've been awake a long time ago too. I don't remember it too well, but I do remember that… this is definitely where we are."
Finally, something to go off of. "Kaito, do you remember that big castle in my room? The toy castle you climbed up before?"
Another affirmative head bob. "Do you remember seeing a castle that looked that? A real castle?"
Kaito put his hands to his head, his eyes turning back to thin lines again as he seemed to be in deep concentration. "I… I think so… we might not be all that far from it, actually… it's deep in the kingdom though. It might take us a long time to get there…"
As his eyes "opened" again, he looked to Miku in confusion. "You want to go there?"
Miku nodded her head enthusiastically. "Gakupo was telling me about this place… the mice aren't welcome there. We may not know how to fix the spell they put on me that's keeping me so small, but we may be able to safely go there."
And she recalled one more detail that gave her hope…
"Gakupo said there's a toymaker in the castle, Drosselmeyer. He may know how to lift curses – he and his nephew lifted one on a princess before."
Well technically Miku hadn't heard the whole story to know if that last part was true, but it was all she had to work with right now. Besides, even if the story wasn't true… if the kingdom really was a place where mice couldn't chase her, then perhaps they could use the relatively safety from them to work out a new plan.
"Drosselmeyer…" Kaito murmured, "That kind of sounds familiar…"
She shivered a moment when she finally realized she'd left her house and fled for her life in the snow… clad only in her nightgown. She needed to get some warmer clothes, somehow… and real shoes…
"If you think it'll work Miku, then I'll take you there," Kaito said happily.
The journey out of the woods was largely uneventful, to Miku's relief. Fortunately, in spite of her improper attire, the cold didn't feel too intense. And whenever she felt her mood start to flag, Kaito's unbelievably cheerful attitude kept her spirits high.
"It's all up to you to decide! I am just a knight! The reckless you knows no fear!"
'What a lovely singing voice,' Miku thought to herself as she let the song carry her worries away. Kaito was an awfully strange person, not just because he was a walking talking nutcracker doll. For someone who just "woke up", there was a lot he did seem to understand without explanation. For example, he seemed to understand a lot about this strange world they were wandering through. Even why it was morning here when it was the dead of night in her home – according to Kaito, time here simply "moved differently". The concept made little sense to her now even if to Kaito it was incredibly simple, but she'd just have to accept it the same way she could accept having been transported to another world through a mouse hole.
Even more bizarre though, even though the mice had threatened to kill Kaito, he never seemed remotely scared for his safety.
"It's all up to you to decide! I am just a knight! If you trip and fall, I will grab your hand… I am a knight in training!"
Far in the distance Miku could spy a village, and even further out a very familiar silhouette – like that of her toy castle. Now she had even more questions in her head – why did Gakupo know what this castle would look like? How did he know about the Land of Dolls and Sweets?
Was she sure she wasn't just dreaming and about to awaken?
"We have gone quite a long way, let's stay closer together! Should we head home now?"
Maybe Kaito was a soldier in this place once, and he was singing a marching tune. Regardless, it was still kind of cute to hear him singing like this. She blushed as she remembered how she sang to him in the garden… just holding a toy in her lap, when in reality, that "toy" was alive and remembered her. 'That's kind of embarrassing now that I think of it…' she thought to herself.
"It's all up to you to decide! I am just a knight! Even if you fall, I'll catch you! I'm a knight in training, I am YOUR knight!"
Kaito stopped marching forward and began pointing to the village in sight of the pair. "We can probably stop there for a little bit… you've been shaking this whole time, you might need to see a doctor!"
Miku attempted to waive away his concerns. "Kaito, I've just been shivering… it's cold, right? But I'll be okay…"
Kaito walked over to her, examining her closely with those painted eyes. "What does that mean? First water came out of your eyes, now you shake when it gets cold?"
With him so close, Miku decided to test something she had been dying to know about her strange new friend. She touched his cheek lightly with her hand. "Kaito, can you feel that?"
He reached up and touched his cheek. "Um… no?"
So his wooden body possessed no nerve endings. That made sense – he could wander endlessly in the cold if he so wanted. "It's because you're not human. I… I can't quite explain it, but our bodies are different. We…"
A twig snapped and Kaito suddenly yanked Miku close to his body. "Who's there?!"
At once Miku realized the entire time they'd been talking, they'd been unaware of being followed – several grey, scraggly mice surrounded them. She didn't have any weapons or tricks – they were merely standing in the snow, unarmed.
"Queen Rin was right! You left through the forest! She'll reward us with endless cheesecake when we bring you two back!"
Miku had never remembered mice appearing so dangerous before but right now she was quite having her fill of all rodents. "Leave Miku alone!" Kaito shouted, "She's done nothing to you!"
The mice closed in further, wielding swords and spears in their clawed hands. "She tried to kill King Len! That cannot stand!"
Fine, if they were going to talk… "I only attacked him because he was going to hurt Kaito! What has Kaito done to any of you?!"
"This ugly nutcracker stood in the way of the Mouse Royalty's revenge! He's not finished receiving his punishment! Him or Drosselmeyer!"
And at that moment, the mice charged forward, Kaito tossing Miku behind him. She watched him swing one of his wooden fists at the first mouse to cross him, knocking it out of the air with a loud knocking sound from the wooden impact. Utter chaos broke out as Kaito tried to fight so many opponents with just his fists – and to Miku's surprise, he wasn't half bad at it. She took her first opportunity to crawl away from them, not wanting to abandon Kaito but also not wanting to stand in his way.
Then suddenly, as Kaito delivered what Miku thought appeared to be a knockout blow… the mouse seemed to explode into black mist, fading away into the night air. And a sword clattered to the ground nearby.
Kaito took advantage of the sudden breakdown in their advance to attack another mouse soldier nearby, grabbing the discarded sword and impaling the creature upon the blade, creating another black cloud as it exploded into nothing. "You're not that strong at all!" he said with a triumphant laugh.
One by one Kaito managed to break through the ranks of the mice. This only seemed to pick up his momentum, as Kaito ran another mouse through without hesitation. This was not the action of a man bumbling with weapons. Though Miku knew nothing of sword fighting, she could still detect that he had been well trained long ago.
She heard a hissing behind her and she screamed as she felt claws wrap around her ankles, roughly dragging her to the ground. "KAITO!" she shouted, grasping around as she was tugged through the snow by one more foe.
Kaito charged after them and Miku found herself pressed hard against her attacker's body, a sword to her throat. It's tight grip tightened around her injured arm, making her cry out as pain shot through her body. "The nutcracker won't allow his pretty human to die, will he?!"
Kaito stood staring down the mouse soldier holding Miku's life in its hands. "Drop your weapon! Or I'll deliver the girl's head chopped from her pretty neck!"
She could actually feel the beast's rotten breath along her neck. "Okay… I'll drop my weapon… I won't fight…"
"NO! Kaito, he's just waiting for backup, you can't – "
"That's enough out of you, human!"
The mouse roughly jabbed its elbow into Miku's ribs and she coughed from the impact. Kaito was going to give up so readily, how could he?! Did he not understand he still had an advantage?! Yet before her eyes he dropped his sword into the snow. "There… now please, let her go…"
Miku's mind raced for some solution – she would not let the mice do what they pleased with either of them. She was going to go home, somehow! If only she had another toy or…
… she didn't need a toy.
"CAT! There's a cat!" Miku shouted at the top of her lungs, "It must have followed us from my room!"
At that the mouse began to panic. "Where?!" it screeched in fear, "Foul beast, where is it!"
She felt the mouse's grip slip and the sword waver… Miku bit its wrist with all her might, trying to ignore the disgusting taste in her mouth as it screeched in pain… as the sword slipped, she grabbed hold of it and pushed the blade through…
… and the mouse exploded into black mist.
For a few moments she just stood there, holding her weapon out as a soft wind rustled her long hair. "I… I just…. Killed it…"
She felt a wooden hand on her shoulder. She looked up at Kaito and tried to maintain her composure again, but a few tears slipped from her eyes. Again he touched her face, watching the tears pool along a wooden finger that felt nothing.
"I'm sorry, Miku."
She couldn't keep crying like this, no matter how frightening everything was… she had to be strong. She touched Kaito's hand, whether he could feel it or not. "Please don't apologize. You were admirably brave."
"But you got hurt…"
She shook her head, trying her best to smile for Kaito. "I still beat him though. We're safe. You killed all the rest of them by yourself, most of them with your bare hands! I've never seen someone so strong before!"
He lowered his hand, staring at the dampness a few moments, before smiling himself. "You were really brave too, you know! Tricking him and taking his sword?! That was so amazing!"
Miku stared at the weapon in her hands. "I guess… I'll hang onto this. We may need it again."
She didn't want to wield it again, but the monsters turning to smoke and mist did make it feel somehow less violent. "Ha… if only Mikuo had seen me do that… he'd be so jealous…"
Kaito walked away from Miku and started to bury the remaining weapons in the snow. "We need to hide these so they don't find us so quick… the people in the village should help us out though, they're dolls like me."
Even as Kaito seemed to have a smile, Miku thought she detected something off about his movements. He wasn't nearly as excited as he was before. Was it just the sudden shock of the ambush or…
"Kaito, are you certain you only just awoke?"
He finished blanketing the discarded weapons with snow. "I guess I must have done something before I woke up… maybe I've been alive before and I upset the mice then."
He turned to Miku and tried to smile more confidently. "But that's good too. If I was awake before, that means maybe people here know me. Hey, maybe Kaito isn't even really my name! Maybe it's Fritz or Franz or Hans or…"
Miku turned her head to the castle. "Maybe that Drosselmeyer person we're looking for is really the one who built you. It sounds like we're definitely in the right to seek him out."
Kaito seemed so much more hopeful. "Right, and if I'm an enemy of the mice, maybe that means I was a soldier or something for the King and Queen of the Land of Dolls and Sweets! Maybe they'll treat me like a hero!"
Even with Kaito's permanently rosy cheeks from the paint, it was hard not to imagine him properly blushing.
"All right… we'll go down to the village… find out the fastest way to the castle without running into the mice… and… and…"
He stared long and hard at Miku to the point she was getting uncomfortable.
"Help you stop shivering!"
A/N:
Hello Kaito, it's nice having dialog for an unusually peppy version of you.
And now we get to my first major divergence from the source material – Gakupo having a backstory! I wanted to slip in a GakuLuka plotline into this story, but I didn't want it to distract from Miku and Kaito meeting and becoming closer. I also had a rather elaborate backstory in mind for Gakupo, and I wanted an elegant way to get it in there. I finally had the idea of including short flashbacks at the start of each chapter and that allows me to have Gakupo have his own storyline without it taking away from the main storyline.
And Luka returns as a faerie again… I never entirely planned on her being a faerie in two fairy tales in a row, but she is portraying a rather famous fairy so I relented.
Another major divergence from the source material – Marie/Clara doesn't actually leave her own world until after the Mouse King is already dead. In the ballet in fact he dies the first night in front of the Christmas Tree! In the novel she just gives the nutcracker a toy sword during the day and the next night he shows up holding seven mouse heads with crowns on them (what a charmer.) Yep, the entire conflict is resolved in her own home and the journey to the Land of Dolls and Sweets is entirely a victory lap. I've noticed most other adaptations stretch out the battle against the mice to take place in the magical world, and I've done the same because it's a lot more interesting to have Miku lost in a strange world.
Oh, and since I don't expect my readership to have an exhaustive knowledge of common 19th century painkillers… "laudanum" is a mixture of morphine and codeine that was used in many medicines around the time period. It's generally known as "Opium Tincture" today. Don't worry, this isn't going to be a story where Miku becomes an opium addict XD
Kaito's idea of names for himself are from either the original novel or other adaptations of it. "Fritz" is the name of Marie's brother. "Franz" is the name of the Nutcracker in the 1979 stop-motion film "Nutcracker Fantasy" by Sanrio, which actually saw an updated re-release in 2014. "Hans" is the true name of the Nutcracker in the 1990 Warner Bros. animated adaptation "The Nutcracker Prince."
Song Credits: Gakupo sang "A Doll's Voice" by Len and Minudo (Chinese producers) and Kaito sang "Knight in Training" by Eccentric-P. Yes, I finally found a perky Kaito song for him to sing. Perky Gakupo songs are an even greater rarity – which is so sad, he's actually all kinds of adorable in peppy songs! Luka is singing "DYE" by AVTechNO!, a song I never thought I'd get a chance to use given that the Engrish makes no sense… but then I had an idea that the faerie Luka might sing it and the nonsense lyrics are just the result of it being a song originating from a supernatural being. Plus the Project Diva video features her in an environment of snow and ice and using her Eternal White module, so I even got to make it a callback within the story itself.