Beauty X Beast ~ Forty!

The two-legged barrel burst through a sudden opening in the darkness, leaving Danielle and Kota blinking in the sudden daylight. Both of them were silent as the contraption continued barreling along, jostling them back and forth. 

Opening his mouth to offer condolences, the Artificer glanced at Danielle and thought better of whatever he was about to say. Instead, he looked down at his hands, where the last of the blisters along his fingers were fading back into healthy skin.

“Why would he do that?” Danielle was the one to finally break the silence between them, jostled out of her ruminations as their ride navigated around a tree. “He could have been sitting right here next to me, and instead…”

“What father doesn't want to protect their daughter?” Kota carefully and quietly replied, seemingly uncertain how his words were going to be taken at the moment. “I fully understand… if I had thought I would be able to protect you better by forcing you away from me, I wouldn't have hesitated, either. He sees how bright you are, how your star is on the rise.”

“That's just it, isn't it?” Danielle’s chin sank to her chest as tears streamed from her eyes. “Stars don't just shine, they burn. It seems like I'm burning everything around me to ashes just by being there. Even if I actively try to stop it, people keep throwing themselves in front of me as a sacrifice to ‘help’ me. I didn’t need him to sacrifice himself… I needed him here. It's what I've been working on ever since Gasteel took him in the first place!”

Choosing to remain silent, Kota could only nod in response to her vehement outburst. His gaze trailed down as he lowered his head in a moment of silence, only to lock onto a large crystal still clutched in Danielle’s left hand. “You have a memory crystal?”

“This?” The Enchantress looked over at the object with a dull stare, listlessly handing it over. “Here. Take it. My father forced it into my hand before he threw me out of the house and let himself be killed.” 

Kota pulled away from her, at least as far as the strap in the jostling Tinkerer’s contraption would allow. “That is not what happened. You can’t seriously think he had no reason for what he did.”

“I know he had his reasons. Most likely, he was ensorcelled by my system skills and made to think he needed to rescue me.” Danielle’s words were dark, and the Artificer’s face immediately set in a resolute expression. 

“Let's find out, shall we?” LeKrout took the crystal and began tapping on it, his movement slowing after a few moments. From there, he focused on empowering the crystal with his skills, and after a moment, the cloudy interior of the crystal changed—showing a scene Danielle couldn’t help but recognize. “The memory just finished being inserted? Let’s see what he did.”

From the positioning of the memory, the Enchantress realized it must be from the perspective of the Beast as it walked along next to her father. Far in the distance, past thousands of metal soldiers, she saw herself and the Artificer dancing on the platform as he got used to piloting his own body once more.

Her father's voice resonated out from the crystal, and Danielle felt a renewed surge of emotions as she heard his voice once more. “They look good together, don't they? I was worried he would be… different. Worse. More like what I've been told about him.”

“The Comte is nothing but honorable, dutiful, and perhaps a touch work-obsessed.” The Beast’s mechanical voice boomed out over the sound of the metal soldiers beginning to shift. “Come now, there is an invasion happening at this very moment, and I will not arrive too late to help. My master seems to think it funny that I am unable to access his pulley system, but I find myself greatly inconvenienced.” 

“You know there's no winning this fight, yes?” 

Henri’s nonchalant words caused Danielle to gasp in agitation as she clutched at her ruined dress. “Father… we could have won. We were so close to a clean escape.”

“I understand the inevitable outcome, if that is what you mean.” The Beast spoke in a soft growl. “At this point, tensions have escalated too far. The king and queen have been informed of our… indiscretion with saving you. Since they are undoubtedly involved, eventually, someone will arrive to force the issue. That is, assuming we even do manage to defeat Gasteel Company.”

Henri stepped in front of the beast, forcing the enormous machine to come to a halt or risk crushing him. Danielle stared at her father, watching as passion burned in his eyes as he in turn stared up at the automaton. “Then you must know that the best option for your master, and my daughter, is to be set upon a path to a new life. Escaping is not enough. We need to fake their deaths and make sure to do it convincingly enough that no one will ever doubt it.”

BST model three hesitated for a long moment, and the perspective shifted from staring down at her father to up where Danielle’s past self was just starting to get off of the platform. “He will never accept this. Comte LeKrout is no coward, and this reeks of-”

“Are you an automaton or a puppet?” Henri’s heated voice cut through whatever the machine was about to say. “I need you to help me with the machinery and set the stage for their escape. If we are able to drive the baron off, all the better, but before we commit ourselves to battle, we must have a contingency in play.” 

The image in the crystal suddenly sped up, the Beast walking across the room in the blink of an eye next to Henri. The Tinkerer drew out a schematic with lightning swiftness, his hands and mouth moving in conversation that must have taken far longer than what was being shown. 

As soon as the blueprint was complete—what Danielle could easily recognize as the transport barrel they were in even now—her father and the Beast got to work building the machine from the spare parts available in the workshop. Suddenly, the memory slowed to a normal speed, “-then all they'll have to do is hit this button, and it will power down the barrel. But we need to make sure it's hard to notice until they are too far away to stop it and turn around.”

“The escape tunnel will be filled with darkness. Let's cut down on the shocks on the legs to make them clutch at the support bar. That'll make it harder for them to feel around and perhaps accidentally press it. Once it powers down, it will not restart without significant effort.” The Beast’s view zoomed in on the button, staying there for a long moment before they were once more moving incredibly swiftly.

“What is happening?” Danielle looked around for the button, finding it out of her reach, but easily within Kota’s. “Stop this contraption immediately! We need to go back!”

Instead of immediately following her order, the Artificer simply continued staring at the crystal, where the duo was adjusting one of the upgraded metal soldiers to have long hair, matching Danielle's appearance enough for a distant observer to be fooled. “Pull out the core, Beast! All I need it to do is walk when I'm pushing on it, and that's easy enough to work manually.”

“You can’t just damage the master’s items like-” whatever argument the automaton had been making was cut off, clearly won by Henri moments later. 

The Artificer spoke into the silence. “What's happening is called ‘fast forwarding’. I can't stop it. This memory was placed in the crystal with the intent of skipping the tedium of what they were doing, to highlight only the important parts.”

“Kota. Press that button-”

“Danielle.” Her father’s words, directed specifically at her with the knowledge she would hear them, caused the Enchantress's throat to close up. She turned her teary-eyed attention back to the memory crystal. “I know how hard it is going to be for you to listen to what I'm going to ask of you. But please… don’t come back. It's time for you to have your own life, with someone who can appreciate you for all of you. Whatever you choose to do, whether it is going off on your own, acting as a researcher with Comte LeKrout, or even if you were to choose to marry him someday… know you have my blessing.”

“As for you, Artificer Kota LeKrout.” Henri’s eyebrow arched. “You owe everything, including your life, to the woman beside you. I fully expect you will never forget this fact, until your dying breath. Whatever she chooses to do in her life, you will enable that, or by the system, I hope that your skills fail you. But… I don't think I need to threaten you. You were not the beast you were made out to be, and I don't think you ever will be.”

Once more, the image ‘fast forwarded’, and Danielle watched as the Beast reached to its chest and pulled out two of its six crystalline eyes, one of them perfectly matching what she held in her hand even now, with the other being the one used as a recording device. That second crystal, her father hooked to his artificial leg, dropping their perspective to that of a six-year-old as he went up the stairs, through a secret passage in the wall, and made his way through the library.

“Ah… that’s how the memory managed to continue to be captured,” LeKrout muttered softly. “The Beast’s eyes were all linked.”

The Beast went with Henri, opening the final escape tunnel and gently setting the enormous, leggy barrel several meters in before sealing Henri into the space. Several long moments of darkness passed before the door opened once more, and Danielle saw her own face appear. Then there was a rapid recounting of the radiance magic being used, Lefroupe appearing, and Danielle sweeping Henri’s feet out and running off.

As the library exploded into flame, only for her and Kota to stumble out of the burning area, she heard her father let out an exclamation of absolute relief she had missed. His hands reached out, clasping onto the nearly blind couple and pulling them into the passage, even as his own arms broke out in blisters. 

She saw how she had looked before the healing potion—swollen, burned, sores weeping blood, and how her father had been shedding tears as he got her to drink her half of the potion. Finally, she saw the barrel racing into the darkness. 

Then, Henri stood tall and turned to reopen the tunnel door, pushing out into the inferno. His position shifted slightly, and Danielle saw a flimsy imitation of herself that he wrapped one arm around. The automaton—no, the simulacrum, since it had no core—began moving forward. 

Though the image was moving quickly, not letting any sound through, Danielle could tell her father was in a great deal of pain, no doubt because the top layer of his body had already begun to burn away. He and the machine made it into the hallway, where hundreds of overheating automatons were pushing out of the manor door, chasing after Gasteel Company—specifically Gasteel himself, as they viewed him as the person responsible for their Master's ‘death’.

Bright red lights were flashing, practically strobing due to the increased viewing speed. In an instant, the view changed slightly, and Danielle realized her father had been knocked to the ground. Almost as quickly, he was back on his feet, walking toward the gaping hole where a section of the grand hallway had been standing.

“An explosion of some kind?” Danielle could barely get the whisper past her dry lips, but she knew she didn't truly want an answer. 

Henri stepped out onto the lawn, sound once more coming through the crystal as the speed reduced to a human level. The sounds of combat filled the air, metal clashing with metal, booming retorts as cores overloaded, and the screams of people burning from the proximity of the melting mechanical soldiers. The Tinkerer looked around, and for a long moment, stared at a section of the estate where there were no troops, neither human nor machine. 

Then, slowly, resolutely, he turned and started limping his way toward where the baron stood fighting off a swarm of automatons. Even with the intensity of the combat, Gasteel was able to survey the battlefield. Moments after Henri started moving toward him, the baron noticed the discrepancy between the limping walk of the Tinkerer and the full sprint of the overloading machines. 

“You! The two of you are alive? After all this? No. No… you’re dead. You just don’t know it yet.” The huge man darted through a break in the flashing sword wall, sprinting toward Henri like a starving wolf. 

The old man let out a curse and turned around, doing his best to rapidly hobble back into the building. Danielle could tell he wasn't going to make it—Gasteel was too fast, too strong. As the baron’s enormous, meaty paw of a hand reached out for the false version of herself, Gasteel suddenly lurched back, dodging to the side as a heavy spear flew through the air he had been occupying only a moment previously. No… not a spear. 

A harpoon.

The projectile slammed into ‘her’, and the false Danielle tumbled to the ground, only to be yanked through the gaping wound in the side of the building. Henri played his part perfectly, raising a hand after her as if to pull her back, and screaming as she vanished into the flames. Then he was grabbed and yanked into the air by his ankle, held upside down as Gasteel sneered into his face.

“At the end, those war toys even turned against her. This will look good in my report… they were too dangerous to keep around. It's actually a good thing I got rid of the Artificer.” Gasteel’s eyes were bright red, both from fury as well as the irritants in the air. “Haaa… he's gone! That means no military advancement. She’s gone, so no social climbing, thanks to an Enchantress. The only win I have remaining…” 

“…is an execution!”

Gasteel spun around, then seemed to recede and shrink, though he remained in place, watching to see where the old man would land. The bright daylight was replaced with smoke, then flame… and as Henri landed back in the manor, the building rumbled and collapsed in on itself. 

The memory crystal went dark as Danielle buried her face in Kota’s singed shirt, holding on for dear life.