Chương 30: 29: Questions

Butter's torn clothes shimmered. Soft ribbons of Gloom drifted across the fabric, weaving broken threads together with delicate precision. Tears sealed themselves. Burn marks faded. Missing sleeves reformed. Dust simply ceased existing. Within seconds her clothes looked freshly washed. She tugged her oversized beanie down until it sat comfortably over her white hair, then adjusted Melody's glowing bandages around her hand with practiced familiarity.

"There."

"Show-off," Katherine muttered. Butter smiled.

"A little." Katherine suddenly froze.

"…Wait a minute." Butter looked up from another sour candy.

"Hm?"

"You just said you're 'Gloom pretending to be a girl.'""…I did."

"What does that mean?" Butter blinked.

"Oh my." She glanced down at herself, as though only just realizing how strange the sentence had sounded.

"Well… this body is just the shape my essence naturally settled into."

"Naturally?"

"Mhm."

"It looks exactly like a human." Butter smiled sheepishly.

"Mostly because it resembles my parents." Katherine stared.

"You can change it?"

"A little." Butter stood from her chair.

"Watch." She closed her eyes. Wisps of Gloom drifted from beneath her skin, wrapping around her like slow-moving silk. She frowned with concentration.

"I don't do this often…" The mist compressed. Her frame stretched upward by several inches. White hair deepened into a rich crimson, cascading almost to the backs of her knees before gathering into an elaborate old-world coiffure adorned with jeweled pins. Amber eyes opened beneath shimmering eyeshadow, framed by long lashes, while fuller lips curved beneath rich green lipstick, a tiny beauty mark resting near one corner.

Her shoulders broadened before narrowing into an elegant waist cinched by an embroidered ivory corset. A magnificent crimson ball gown blossomed around her in layered silk, its golden vine embroidery catching the light whenever she moved. Diamond earrings swayed beneath her hair, matching bracelets glittered at her wrists, and the entire image radiated effortless nobility, as though royal courts existed merely because she occasionally chose to attend them. She opened one eye.

"…See?" Katherine stared, then screamed.

"WHAT?!" Butter flinched.

"Honeycakes…"

"You're gorgeous!" Katherine shot to her feet and hurried around her in disbelief.

"Oh my gosh! Your hair! The dress! The makeup! The lipstick! The..." Her eyes dropped.

"The boobs!" Butter immediately folded her arms across her chest.

"They're… a consequence of the shape."

"I DON'T CARE!" Katherine practically bounced where she stood.

"You look like you own seven kingdoms!" Butter laughed.

"That is… oddly specific."

"You're so tall!"

"I know."

"You're so fancy!"

"I know."

"You're so… so…" Katherine completely lost the ability to form a sentence. Butter smiled. The Gloom shifted again. The gown unraveled into drifting ribbons of crimson light. Her body shortened slightly before broadening through the shoulders. Crimson hair receded into neatly combed dark auburn that rested just past the ears. Strong jaw. Straight nose. Warm bronze skin. Calm hazel eyes beneath thick brows. A charcoal waistcoat settled over a crisp white shirt with rolled sleeves.

Tailored trousers, polished leather boots, and a long forest-green coat trimmed in silver embroidery completed the look. A simple signet ring rested upon one hand, while thin round spectacles perched neatly on his nose, making him resemble the sort of thoughtful professor who secretly knew several efficient ways to dismantle a person. He adjusted the glasses.

"This one's easier." Katherine's jaw dropped.

"…WHAT?!" Butter rubbed the back of his neck.

"You're yelling again."

"You're a boy! A man!"

"For the moment."

"You're actually convincing!"

"…Thank you?" Katherine slowly circled him.

"This is unbelievable." She poked his shoulder.

"Is this real?"

"Mhm." She poked his arm.

"Muscles?"

"They're there." She reached up and poked his cheek.

"…Wowie." Butter laughed. Pink mist drifted upward once more. The broader shoulders softened. The shorter hair lengthened into familiar white locks beneath the oversized beanie. Masculine features melted away until Butter's familiar face smiled back at her. She let out a long breath.

"Oh my." Katherine blinked.

"…You're back." Butter nodded.

"My essence prefers this shape."

"So you can't stay as the others forever?" She shook her head.

"Only for a few minutes."

"Why?"

"It takes concentration. My essence keeps trying to return to… well… me." She adjusted her beanie.

"It feels like trying to hold water inside the wrong-shaped cup." Katherine sat back down, still staring.

"…Can you become anyone?"

"Not exactly. It's more like copying a drawing. You can reproduce most of it, but someone who knows the original really well might notice the eyes are a little too big, or the chin's slightly off. I can do it… it just takes effort."

"Can you grow wings?" Butter considered it.

"…Probably."

"Four arms?"

"…Probably."

"A tail?" Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Butter nodded.

"Holy mother of Christ…" The questions kept coming. Could she copy fingerprints?

"Yes." Disguise herself?

"Fairly well." Did changing hurt?

"Not really." Several more minutes disappeared beneath Katherine's endless curiosity before she finally leaned back with a dreamy sigh.

"…You know…" Butter looked over.

"I think your normal one's still my favorite." Butter's smile became warmer.

"… Mine too." The conversation gradually settled. Their impossible discussion gave way once again to the mountain of snacks between them, and for a little while the only sounds filling the vast space were the crinkle of candy wrappers, Butter quietly chewing another sour candy, and Katherine's occasional, astonished laugh whenever she remembered that, for roughly two minutes, her new friend had somehow become both an elegant queen and a scholarly gentleman....

Silence settled again, though this time it felt lighter. Katherine leaned back in her chair.

"What kind of music do you like?" Butter shrugged.

"Anything entertaining."

"That is the least helpful answer imaginable."

"I know."

"Well..." Katherine cleared her throat dramatically.

"... I'm warning you."

"About what?"

"My singing." Butter looked confused. Katherine took an exaggerated breath. Then unleashed absolute catastrophe.

"AAAAAAAMAAAAAZIIIING GRAAAAAAAACE—" Every note missed. Somehow she found pitches that shouldn't have existed. The final syllable cracked so violently Butter instinctively covered one ear.

"... Honeycakes..." Katherine continued anyway.

"HOW SWEEEEET THE SOOOOUUUND—" Butter burst into laughter. She folded over in her chair, wheezing so hard tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

"You're so..." Another fit of laughter interrupted her. Katherine couldn't help laughing too.

"I warned you!"

"That..." Butter wiped at one eye.

"That was awful."

"I know."

"It sounded like a goose being exorcised."

"That was actually the style I was going for." Butter laughed again.

"Nailed it." The room felt warmer afterward. Katherine smiled to herself. Worth it.

"You know," she said after a while, "that thing earlier..." Butter tilted her head.

"When you were unconscious."

"Oh my."

"Your body kept fighting." Butter blinked.

"... Again?"

"You say that like it happens often."

"It kinda does." Katherine leaned forward.

"You were terrifying." Butter scratched her cheek.

"I don't remember much."

"No?" She shook her head.

"Usually it feels like dreaming."

"What did you dream about?" Butter thought for a moment.

"Weird stuff."

"Such as?"

"I think..." She frowned.

"I dreamt I split a moon in half." Katherine stared.

"With Gloom?" Butter shook her head.

"... Technique." Silence. Butter laughed awkwardly.

"Which is obviously nonsense."

"Why?"

"Because I don't think I can do that."

"You don't?" She shook her head.

"Dreams exaggerate things." Katherine looked at her as though she'd just said grass was blue.

"Sugarbear..."

"... Yeah?"

"I've watched you fight." Butter waited.

"I genuinely believe you could do anything." Butter looked away, suddenly embarrassed.

"That's... sweet." Katherine suddenly perked up.

"I can play the flute." Butter looked pleasantly surprised.

"Really?"

"Uh-huh."

"I play drums."

"You do?" Butter nodded.

"I learned because hitting things rhythmically made me happy."

"Wowie." Butter reached toward empty space. Her pencil appeared between her fingers. A few quick sketches. Ink shimmered. The paper folded into itself. A full drum kit materialized beside her chair, polished wood gleaming beneath the chamber lights. Another sketch. A silver concert flute appeared in Katherine's lap.

"... Okay," Katherine whispered.

"I am never getting used to that."

"One more." The page glowed. A plump pink dragon waddled into existence. It stood barely four feet tall, wore a perfectly tailored black suit, polished shoes, a crimson bow tie, an enormous top hat, and a monocle that somehow made it look even more distinguished. A tiny cane swung beneath one arm. It paused. Adjusted the monocle. Coughed politely into one claw. Then bowed.

"Good evening." Its voice carried the dignified warmth of an elderly butler. Katherine blinked.

"... Hello." The dragon nodded once, walked over to a grand piano Butter apparently hadn't drawn a second ago, cracked its knuckles, and sat down with impeccable posture.

"... Sugarbear?"

"Hmm?"

"Why is there a gentleman dragon?" Butter shrugged.

"I needed accompaniment."

"... Obviously." The dragon produced a tuning fork from nowhere. Ting. Satisfied, it adjusted its top hat. Katherine looked around nervously.

"... Won't someone hear us?" Butter blinked.

"Hear what?"

"Everything." She gestured broadly around the chamber. Butter chuckled.

"Oh my." She tapped the floor beneath them.

"This whole floor's soundproof."

"What?"

"Has to be." She leaned back.

"Apis production is unbelievably delicate. If vibrations from one laboratory reached another, experiments could contaminate each other, equipment would desynchronize, and half the building would probably explode." Katherine looked around with fresh appreciation.

"So..."

"All those fights?" Butter nodded.

"Nobody outside this room heard a thing." Katherine blinked.

"... That's absurd."

"Very." The dragon lifted one claw.

"On your cue, ladies." Butter picked up her drumsticks. Katherine drew a careful breath and lifted the flute. The first note came out a little shaky. Butter answered with a light tap of the snare. The pink dragon raised its cane.

"One, two..." Its tail flicked.

"... Three, four." The room filled with music. Butter wasn't flashy. She played the way she fought, steady and inventive, every beat landing exactly where it needed to. Her wrists flowed effortlessly between the toms and cymbals, building cheerful little rhythms that seemed to grin across the room at Katherine. Katherine laughed and answered with a playful melody. The dragon nodded approvingly as nimble claws danced across the piano keys.

"Excellent. Again." Butter slipped into a quicker rhythm. Katherine followed. Before long they were laughing between verses, abandoning the original tune entirely as they invented increasingly ridiculous lyrics.

"Cookies for breakfast..."

"Sugarbear!"

"Candy for lunch..."

"That is not a balanced diet!" Katherine nearly dropped the flute laughing.

"You're impossible!" Butter answered with a booming roll across every drum before crashing into the cymbals. The dragon pointed dramatically with its cane.

"Splendid! More conviction!" Katherine snapped a salute.

"Yes, Maestro!" Another verse. Another chorus. Another fit of laughter. The endless rows of pods and the colossal machinery faded into the background. For a little while, the chamber belonged instead to a drum kit, a silver flute, an absurdly dignified dragon in a top hat, and two girls making spectacularly terrible songs simply because they could. Butter's smile came more naturally now.

The weariness behind her eyes softened, and the tension that always seemed wound through her shoulders eased just enough for Katherine to notice. There you are... The dragon gently guided the music toward its conclusion, sweeping its cane through the air as Butter answered with one final flourish. BA-DUM. Katherine held the last note. It lingered beneath the vaulted ceiling before slowly dissolving into silence. The dragon removed its top hat and bowed deeply.

"A delightful performance." Butter smiled.

"I think so too." Then she froze. The smile vanished. The drumsticks slipped from her fingers. Clack. The dragon looked toward her, its monocle flickering.

"Miss Butter?" Without warning, the grand piano dissolved into drifting ribbons of pink light. The drum kit followed, its polished wood unraveling into shimmering strands before disappearing altogether. Katherine looked down in confusion as the silver flute in her hands came apart into glowing threads that slipped through her fingers like mist. The dragon lowered its gaze to its own body.

"Oh dear..." Its elegant suit faded first. Then the crimson bow tie. Its cane dissolved into sparkling motes. The top hat tipped politely toward the two girls one final time as the rest of its body scattered into countless points of shimmering light.

"... Until next..." The sentence never ended. The dragon disappeared. Butter's posture suddenly went rigid. Her eyes rolled back, leaving only thin slivers of glowing pink visible beneath her eyelids. A low, animal groan escaped her throat.

"Butter?!" Katherine lurched forward. A seizure. Magical backlash. Something far worse. Butter didn't respond. The chamber dissolved around her, pixelating into static. Sterile metal replaced warm air, and the low hum of machinery warped into the whine of medical lasers and the wet snick of scalpels parting flesh. The headache wasn't pain. It was memory. — Age: Seventeen. Location: Isolde's Private Studio. The room was half laboratory, half shrine.

Brushed steel walls gleamed beneath clinical lights while every surface was crowded with manga pages, figurines, and illustrations dedicated to surgery, body horror, and transformation. Nun surgeons removing their own nerves. Living cathedrals grown from tumors. Pain used as currency. Plague victims distilled into singular biological functions. Entire walls devoted to people being dismantled, rebuilt, and repurposed. To Isolde, they weren't stories. They were textbooks.

Butter lay naked on a steel table, restrained by glowing violet cords no thicker than rubber bands. Each carried a single absolute command: Hold. She had fought them once. The cords didn't stretch. Didn't weaken. When she tried tearing through one, it sliced through flesh instead, parting skin, muscle, and bone with effortless precision. Resistance wasn't impossible. Just expensive. Beside her stood Isolde Vex. Human. Allegedly. That was the disturbing part.

She wore the flawless body of a woman in her twenties, preserved through custom hormones and medical genius, but the illusion unraveled whenever she moved. The patience. The measured pauses. The economy of motion. The eyes. Those eyes belonged to someone decades older. She wore youth the way an actor wore a costume. A Talon looked dangerous. Korhess looked dangerous. Isolde looked wrong. A concept pretending to be a person. Curiosity stripped of morality.

"Hmm," she murmured while studying a holographic tablet.

"Maze and Clock possess architectural Gloom. Structured. Ordered. Yours..." Her gaze drifted to Butter.

"Yours is chaos. A child's tapestry after the threads have been pulled loose. Fascinating." She set the tablet aside and sealed a pair of gloves over her hands with a soft hiss. There was no malice in her expression. Only excitement. The pure anticipation of a scientist presented with something unique. That made her worse. You could bargain with hatred. You could fight cruelty. You could not reason with curiosity.

"Tsavt tanem," Isolde said softly.

"I take the pain." Then she picked up the scalpel and the experiment began. There was no anesthetic. Numbness would corrupt the data. The first scalpel entered below her ribs. The pain was so sharp, so clean, it bypassed shock entirely. It was information. You are open. Butter's back arched against the restraints, a silent scream trapped behind clenched teeth. Sweat burst across alabaster skin, soaking her white hair and plastering it to the steel table as Isolde worked with serene precision. She didn't merely cut.

She explored. Organs were lifted, cradled, examined beneath descending micro-lenses while the room filled with the scent of copper blood, sterile gel, and exposed viscera. Her Gloom remained silent. A small device had been drilled into the base of her skull, its tendrils woven through her spine like roots. A dam. It intercepted the flow of her magic and trapped it inside her body. She could feel it there - pressure without release. She couldn't heal. Couldn't summon Aria. Couldn't edit her position.

The realization cut colder than the scalpel. Isolde knew. Of course she knew. Moth Through the Lantern's Flame didn't rely on Gloom. It was pure hyper-accelerated biology carved into Butter's nervous system through years of training, her final card when magic failed. But the glowing bands around her wrists and throat weren't merely restraints. They carried a law. HOLD. The law didn't care whether movement came from muscle or magic. It defined her position as fact.

If she attempted the Moth technique, she would be trying to exist somewhere else while reality insisted she remained here. The result would be self-bisection. The technique was suicidal. Butter was trapped in the absolute sense of the word. Only endurance remained, her heart beating and lungs dragging in ragged breaths while Isolde systematically stripped away every other part of her identity. She was deleting the escape artist. Leaving only resilient meat behind. Ultimate control.