The Toy-Maker's Dilemma

[Weirdlet]

Tam looked down at him with a faint smile that sobered quickly.

"I'm here on behalf of Archie Holden."

[Karl the Mad]

This was the Romanov? Katherine thought it'd be pretty cool if the situation wasn't so shitty. "Our condolences, of course," she murmured politely, focusing her Mentalism on the aggrieved Karthian. She'd never met a surviving Crimson Spirit victim, and was curious what she'd pick up on; without her abilities it was plainly obvious he was in mourning, the sadness wasn't just for show. "C'est la vie, Monsieur," she said in agreement, "c'est la vie."

[IamLEAM1983]

Three gently led the aggrieved Karthian aside and got him to sit down in the stairs they'd just come up from. "I know this is difficult for you, sir, but we'd be appreciative if you could make a deposition. Just try and focus on the facts for a few moments."

That would've been a bit of a blunt thing to say in normal circumstances, but leading afflicted Karthians back to their dispassionate roots wasn't exactly gauche. Terrans could be expected to marshal their own impulses; Anastasius would probably end up bawling on Aislinn's shoulder if nobody prodded his mind away from the obvious trauma, and he'd then cry himself to either sleep or to a head-splitting migraine - whichever came first. Considering, Three's suggestion was perfectly normal.

Anastasius seemed to think so, too. He looked down and sideways to Three, who'd put a knee down a few steps below. The alien cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes for a moment, obviously trying to reconnect to something like the average Karthian's dispassionate core. That was technically lost to him, but he could still try and find a happy medium between clinical observation and raw emotional chaos.

He'd composed himself a few moments later, although deep sadness clung to every ember of thought Katherine would pick up, even if these thoughts were now orderly. Anastasius Romanov was a man who considered any blow dealt to Art to be a tragedy of some kind. Whenever a local artist died, especially someone he'd financed, he tended to take it quite personally. As hyper-sensitive as he'd become thanks to his affliction, he "got" artistic currents that weren't just obscure; they'd broken beyond the pale of artistic expression and come full-circle to gouache drawings of a childlike level of simplicity or aimless chalk scrawls on the ground.

With that in mind, even stuff that left most of everyone uncaring or confused left him feeling incensed or marginalized. Phyllis Laidlaw had been one of those artists, pushing Modernism so far as to sell an entirely blank canvas for six million dollars. Anastasius' gallery was filled with things of this nature, objects only a similarly afflicted alien could have considered as a form of high artistic expression.

"Virgil is a virtuoso in terms of mechanized expression. He collects discarded automaton fragments from all three major constructors and splices them together," he explained. "Virgil Laidlaw has no need of phylacteries or souls to give life to his machines; they simply produce kinetic force, sound and colour in their purest expression. In these recycled limbs and mechanical organs, I saw the reflection of our mechanized society and a potent reflection on Postmodernism's deeply conflicted nature..."

Three tsked in light annoyance. "I'm sure that's great, sir, but what about the victim? What was she working on?
- Phyllis? Oh, she adored her husband's very nature, found it to be greatly stimulating to her creative process. She was a maverick, my friends, plying via outside of all known and current magical Schools. She completed her husband's research, in that the movements of the soul itself within an armature were seen to her as having an inner beauty, a perfect recollection of the Organic within a shell of entirely Inorganic material. Together, they captured the essence of Life as it is experienced by automatons of all conditions and social stratas. They truly were a unique pair."

A quick pause. "That still doesn't tell me what she was researching," Three realized.

"Vergil had told me of a - piece of equipment she had commissioned from parties unknown. Something which she claimed was to be the cornerstone of her research. A kind of omni-machine of sorts, a perfect representation of organic Chaos creating an emergent, mechanical form of Order. Or - rather, a facsimile of it. Something to represent deeply esoteric beliefs I found to be somewhat in line with the Masonic Order..."

All that abstract information made Aidan's head spin. First omnipotent machines and Clank body parts mashed together, then something about Freemasons, of all people?! Three was grasping at straws. His forte was basic criminology, he really wasn't one of the resident culture buffs... At least they had some sort of lead, now.

They could keep gently pressing the Karthian for info, or see about inspecting the Laidlaws' residence.

***

The salesman - whose nametag actually read Manager - looked down at the box, his eyes widening. "Oh, right! Right this way, miss..."

He led Tam to the rear office, past the front storage area. "A few of us asked for one of you guys to come over because there's something we didn't exactly mention to the cops...

Me and a few others were working at the Tool Shed, about two months ago. I was on stocking detail. Joe and Cassie were at the registers. This - man comes up to Joe and he's, like, this Steampunk cyborg, of all things! I know, it's pretty much impossible on a technical level, the eighteen-hundreds were pretty much about going Clank or croaking - but I saw it. A chromed hand, all detailed like mister Holden's, but the symbols were all... wrong. Made my head spin just to look at the back of the guy's right hand.

He asked if we took special orders. Mister Gammell does, so I said yes. He asked if we had anything pending, saying he'd like to have it."

He pulled out a ledger book, leafed through it and then handed it to Tam, open about halfway through. "I couldn't just give an order to someone who wasn't a client, so I refused. He looked - old. Not, you know - vampire-old or dragon-old. Like something had let him to shrivel up way past his time. He sure as Hell wasn't Archmage material, I'm a light Sensitive. I would've felt it.

After I refused, he got violent. I threatened to call the cops and that made him sober up. I had the ledger open on the counter while we were talking, and he said I had to show this to mister Gammell, when I had the chance..."

The drawing, carelessly overlapping several noted items and signatures, was of three interlocking cogs - drawn in a strangely flowing manner that gave the thing an almost organic nature. Tilt it one way and it almost looked like a grinning skull, lined with nightmarish tentacles. Inside the cogs were more of the nauseating symbols Tam would recognize from the cube's surface.

"I left the ledger by his door, the way I always do when there's a problem. The next morning, I had an email from him asking me to close both stores indefinitely. I did - but the murders started happening and I haven't heard from mister Gammell in one way or another in days, now. We were getting antsy, the employees were itching for their pay. I had to let them back in, restore some semblance of order. It was either that or we drew ourselves mad with worry, back home."

***

Percival didn't seem preoccupied. "Time. A luxury few of Hope's Detectives can afford. The good Knight will come, milady. Of that I have no doubts."

As expected, a burly-looking fellow, somewhere between a Bigfoot relative and a Mogwai of Gremlins fame, walked through the crowd and toward them. In true bugbear fashion, Harry Benson wore pricey Italian shoes cut to his impressive size, a rather expensive-looking suit and a modern-day fob watch. His flat, vaguely ursine and vaguely porcine face wasn't exactly pretty, but there was a fair bit of personality to it. He momentarily turned solemn at the sight of Percival, one hand reaching to his other side's breast as he bowed.

"Viscount," he said. "I've cordoned off the scene, as requested by yourself and Captain Hendricks of the 17th.
- Good man," nodded the gruff, who then gestured to Neasa. "I present to thee Neasa McConmara of Shield. She hath been asked to see to her own investigation."

The big man grunted thoughtfully, but there was no disapproval or dismissal in the look he gave her. Instead, he outstretched a furry hand. "Detective Harry Benson," he said. "I've been a Knight in Sir Percival's service for a century and I've worked with the HPD for the last forty years. We were looking forward to the Shield Act being passed. I know I was missing the old days with capes flying around town."

Still, he stepped sideways a bit, suggesting that they follow him. "I'd just like to know if you're used to seeing how the Bane affects us. Er- iron, I mean. This one isn't pretty."

[Weirdlet]

Tam pressed a hand over the pocket that the manager was gawping at. This really wasn't the sort of thing that should be out and about, she was getting more and more convinced- and especially not in a room with kids. She was glad of it when he led her to the back room, and listened to his tale with crossed arms and a watchful eye.

"This fella- he left the ledger here with you? Did you get any pictures of him from security, or do you think you could describe him again while I drew?" she asked, preparing to go for her phone lest she need to call or scan-and-send something fast. "Or tell me more about his arm, I'm pretty good with placing those."

[IamLEAM1983]

"I could get you the footage, if you'd like," the manager said. "It's a bit garbled, though. Like nothing I've seen since we've figured out how to circumscribe loose via emissions. I think there's a few usable seconds..."

That didn't take too long. A quick trip to a set of drawers located behind them, and the man produced a fairly standard CD-ROM. He swapped it between two devices and brought up a video feed on his own monitor.

"Okay... There. Right there."

The colour footage was a bit grainy but as explained, he'd managed to isolate a set of good frames. From a top-down three-quarters view, Tam would see a broad-brimmed fedora, an unusually long nose protruding past its edge, skin that was more grey than strictly pale, and so wrinkled as to feel like the work of an overzealous special effects producer. The man's chin was just as impossibly pointy, with the duster he wore having a fairly frayed and ragged look to it. Underneath the duster was something that probably would have been a nice suit, if it hadn't been so rumpled, stained and generally mishandled.

The arm and hand he'd mentioned came into view as the man lifted his hand to pick up a nearby pencil to draw on the ledger. Brass so carefully polished as to appear almost golden, intricately carved carters swirling with the same nauseating symbols - although the decayed video feed removed any lasting effects from looking at them.

The outside job was obviously custom, but the few visible pistons had the look of luxurious attention to detail. This wasn't the work of British efficiency, the Russian visionary spirit or the Japanese mercenary outlook towards limb design. This was unquestionably American. A Duesenberg Clank arm, then, somehow made to interface with flesh...

Tam would've heard about the "Doozies", from which the popular expression had sprung. It also was the origin for a short-lived brand of luxury armature frames - something like Harley-Davidson or Titan Motors for aspiring Clanks. The designs they'd produced had been beautiful, yes, and certainly outlandish - but they'd broken past the tolerable limits of the average mind. Like the Kitaiteki in the Meiji Era, their designs had been carried so far as so sometimes cause violent losses of connection with their intrinsically human or anthro nature. Some Duesenberg users had paid the high price for their extravagance, ending up in Chimera Row and forcefully lubricated with sedative-laced oil on a daily basis. Psychosis seemed to surface in habitual users of these luxury frames.

[Weirdlet]

"Now *THAT*-" Tam murmured, eyes lighting up as they all four lit over the blurred pixel outline of the arm. "-is interesting." She watched the reel and the stills again, reaching gently past the manager's shoulder to tap buttons, looming without necessarily realizing she was doing it.

"Do you mind terribly if I take a copy of this?"

[TennyoCeres84]

Aislinn frowned thoughtfully and glanced at Anastasius and then at the Laidlaws' residence. She was nonverbally indicating that they should split up. "Perhaps Katherine could interview Mr. Romanov. There still might be some info she can get out of him. We need to search their home," she sent.

***

Neasa followed the bugbear and bit her bottom lip nervously. She had seen Fae occasionally get hurt by the random piece of iron. In fact, she had once seen an iron skillet fall on a Fae classmate's foot in Home Ec. The poor girl had done her best to restrain her tears, but her pain had been obvious. "I'm aware of the effect iron has on Fae, but I've never seen any severe cases. Though, if the box Tam was going to examine was any indicator, the box Egimbart bought had strange, mind-twisting markings on it. From what you just said, the box obviously had iron components in it."

***

Unsure whether Bucky wanted to join his investigation, Ciaran had driven his bike over to Astoria Developments to inquire about George Sanderson. He hoped he might be able to get some sort of information about the clank, what caused him to go to such lengths that it killed him.

[Karl the Mad]

Fascinating, Katherine thought, watching Romanov go on about the victim and her art. Most Karthians were almost heartless in their logic, unable to even consider 'emotional' subjects like artistry or imagination; she had, here, a benign example of the Crimson Spirit, a fellow who felt almost too deeply and experienced both suffering and exaltation equally.

"Can you show me around Phyllis' studio, Herr Romanov?" the lawyer asked innocently. "I'd especially like to look at her most recent work, you make her sound like such a virtuoso!" Behind her back she made shooing motions at the other two; I got this, she was saying.

[IamLEAM1983]

"No, of course not," confirmed the manager, who picked an unmarked disc's jewel case from the desk. "This, and the symbol, is why I asked the police to relay this to someone from Shield. I'm honestly glad you came."

He gave her a hurried smile. "The fact is; we don't know who exactly mister Gammell is. You'd figure this would run against our ability to manage both his stores, but in the age of email and real-time communication with Armstrong Station? It doesn't matter. For centuries, there's been a Mister Gammell to keep the local toymaking industry alive; to give us jobs in a field that doesn't see much use nowadays. To give us a sense of passion.

I know this won't help you or Shield in any way, but - whatever he's involved in? Don't judge him too harshly by it. You don't receive visits from strange men with strange scrawls and Clank arms without being mixed up in something; but the fact is he's provided for generations of workers, here. Entire families."

The man's look briefly became more earnest. "We'd all very much like to know he's back in one piece. Seeing him is optional. It doesn't make sense, I know, but that's the way it's always been. He says that's how he likes it - us being free to imagine him however we like. He always said the truth would disappoint us."

***

Bucky had followed along, but he honestly didn't feel like much help. Unless Marlon Biggs had the Clank's body on his desk, there honestly wasn't much he could do.

Astoria's offices were as environmentally friendly and as postmodern in their architecture as could possibly be. A few badge flashes were all that was needed for them to reach Weasel Biggs' cousin.

Marlon was human, but looking at him, you really couldn't have told. He had a narrow face and nervous eyes, a closely-trimmed beard and a set of designer bifocals, was stuck in a suit that was a smidge too small for him and surrounded by a décor Weasel had obviously put together. All Marlon had ever been good at had involved lining up numbers or providing Walton with tax plans during the penguin's brief mayoral stint. His architects were the one to look for if you were interested in specific designs, but Marlon had only ever been sufficient if said designs involved ruining someone's day on the fiscal level. You could've said that he looked like a weird mix of Matt Frewer and Kim Coates - all nerves, no guts.

"Gentlemen," he asked, trying for the old Biggs cool and failing utterly at it, "is there something wrong? I've been informed of your presence in the building..."

Bucky had to fight hard to suppress an eyeroll. "Yeah. George Sanderson, a Loader type. About four hundred pounds, steel platin'. Carried your girders and stuff around for the rest of your crew. I'm assuming you've heard the news..."

Marlon swallowed. "Yes - that's quite tragic; quite tragic indeed... I, uh, I'm not sure as to how I could be of any help to you, however. I was strictly his employer, I didn't keep a log of what he did during his leisure hours."

Bucky eyed Ciaran. "C'mon, Mar. I'm a Clank, you've seen Clanks before, y'all seen Clanks before. We don't Tweak if we don't have a damn good reason. You should know that. If it makes you feel better, though, I can step out here and leave you to the naughty bits with my friend Ciaran here."

Marlon shook his head, ignoring Bucky and looking at Ciaran, as if this made the subject less apparently touchy for him. "Well, Sanderson was a fair bit of a Lothario. The work teams had all sorts of colourful stories about extra parts he kept on hold for certain, er, situations. I figure someone gave him that Tweaking rod they found in his chest, and there was a defect in it. It killed him. That happens, right?"

That was a rather stupid assumption. Pushing your gears to the point of killing yourself was like trying to rip your own thumbs off to escape a pair of handcuffs.

***

Benson nodded. "That's one way to put it. What it makes me say is that Egimbart was suicidal. A little iron content hurts. A lot is utter agony. The only parts of our body that can touch iron without any kind of protection are the nails and claws. Or the hooves, if you look at Sir Percy. If the nails touch the root at the base of the hooves, though, he's in for a world of pain."

He paused. "Imagine that - just ten times worse. The box wasn't just a Jack Kevorkian Expy device; it was designed to kill slowly. To many any Fae that would handle it suffer."

They arrived at another guard tower and quickly entered it, reaching its peak Egimbart had apparently been Captain of the Guard, judging by the fineries in his quarters; and Fae blood was splattered everywhere. Sprawled on the floor, its legs suggesting that he'd been cross-legged before dying, was Egimbart. Or rather, what was left of him.

The blood, the corpse, even the second box - everything shimmered and wavered slightly. Neasa wasn't seeing the crime scene itself so much as a handy bit of glamourie, designed so no matter what could happen to the premises, the investigators would always have a facsimile of the scene to work with.

In essence, the only thing she was spared is the scent of it.

It still wasn't pretty.

***

Anastasius took care in order to step well away from the human and selkie. He honestly didn't want to look at the crime scene again, and did his very best to distract himself with Virgil's works.

While the former Czar would be busy giving Starr a Postmodernism 101 class with the kind of gusto reserved for overeager university professors, the other two were free to approach the crime scene proper, which had apparently been Phyllis' working area.

An old and creaky armchair had been stained through and through with the blood of the poor woman. Everywhere around the chair, papers were scattered. Research notes, apparently, although some of them showed a strange series of very deliberate swirling lines that weren't runes or symbols, but that had obviously been scrawled over the pages with a purpose in mind.

A nearby stool held up a pile of photocopied summaries, similar to the one Archie had so painstakingly written out. Next to it was a smattering of Polaroids, showing Laidlaw's remains before she'd been moved. Her hands had clutched her own box rather feverishly, and the thing had been caked in blood. Before shipping it to Shield, the object had obviously been cleaned.

"Shit," gently swore the human. "Someone at Homicide cleaned up the puzzle box before packaging it," he explained, holding up one of the photographs for Aislinn to see. "I know odds are there's nothing but Laidlaw's fingerprints on it - but now we'll never know for sure. Even if we find anything on the object's surface, we can't bring it up as hard evidence. Tam's touched it, Archie's held it - that's one potential set of clues down."

He sighed thoughtfully. "There's something about those papers, though. Why didn't anyone pick them up?"

He consulted the written report, hoping to find an answer. "Wait - the Blood techs found something weird. Same DNA, two points of origin. Like she bled to death once, then got up, threw those papers around the chair she'd died in, and then sat back down."

The human eyed the selkie apprehensively. "Necromancy, then? What do you think?"

[TennyoCeres84]

"Uh, I doubt it. I don't think a clank intends to die from using a defective spindle, sir," Ciaran frowned. "It's obvious Sanderson manipulated his body until it broke down, and his phylactery was broken. We need your help."

***

"Oh my God," Neasa breathed with a mixture of disgust and shock. She turned back to Benson and Percy. "Does anyone know why Egimbart was suicidal?" she asked.

***

"In this case, I wouldn't rule anything out," Aislinn surmised. ""Now if we can just figure out exactly what she was researching. Other than stuff straight out of conspiracy theories, like analyze the papers as long as our minds aren't warped."