14. Melting Point (15)
14. Melting Point (15)
By the following afternoon, we were well-rested, and after dinner we began moving toward the theater. The troupe currently performing there was about to finish their final show, and we intended to set up our stage the moment they cleared out.
In a typical theater, you'd leave at least three or four days between the previous show and the next. But the tent theaters set up near the train stations worked differently. Trains covered hundreds of kilometers a day and ran on fixed, punctual schedules. If you planned your timetable right, you could wrap a final showing one evening and open the first showing of a new production the very next day.
That was why rail circuses needed so many freight cars. Stage equipment had to be hauled around in a state of semi-assembly, since it had to go up and come down again and again on short notice. That kind of bulk transport would have been impossible with wagons, but trains made it work.
We reached the theater a little past eight in the evening. The last show had just ended, and the audience was spilling out of the tent. The spectators lingering near the entrance spotted us climbing down from our carriage, and their faces went through a sudden, startled transformation.
"Whoa! What the—! Look at that!"
"M-monsters! They're monsters!"
"Wait a second! Is that... is that them?"
"It's Wonderstein's Monster Circus!"
Every eye locked onto us.
The troupe members, who had been through this plenty of times, tensed up, wary that the crowd might turn hostile. But I caught something different in their reaction compared to what we'd faced over the past eight months. They still stared at the monster members with fear in their eyes, but that fear was no longer mixed with the heavy disgust or contempt of the past. Now it carried curiosity, even a kind of fascination.
The monsters sensed the shift as well and stood there awkwardly, gauging the crowd's mood. Before they could settle on a response, Ella pushed through their ranks and raised her voice.
"Please do not approach too closely! It's dangerous!"
She ordered the Ratmen to move the cage holding Umon around to the back of the theater, then shooed the monster members, who were still standing around dazed, to hurry inside. They wore puzzled looks at her oddly exasperated tone, but they followed her lead.
Behind the tent, the performers who'd gone before us were dismantling their equipment. In the past, whenever we'd crossed paths with people in the same business, they'd mostly shown us open hostility. Jealousy, you could call it — resentment that we'd lucked into a sponsor and a spot in the Circus Grand Prix, plus a visceral dislike of a so-called monster circus swaggering around as if it belonged.
This time, though, even the ones who looked slightly uncomfortable didn't openly scowl or sneer. Some even approached to say hello or strike up a conversation. Compared to just a week earlier, the difference in attitude was so dramatic it was hard to process.
Ella cleared up the mystery a few hours later. We'd finished our preparations and were sitting in a circle onstage, eating a late-night snack Yurakne had made, when she brought over a magazine and opened it in front of us.
"The December issue of the Christian Guide ran a feature on us."
The Christian Guide picked a handful of Grand Prix participants each month for in-depth performance analyses in special editions. This month, we were one of the troupes they'd chosen.
A few members couldn't hide their discomfort. They were probably remembering the scathing review that same magazine had given us months ago. Back then, the Guide had dismissed them as embarrassments unworthy of the title "acrobat" — acts that relied on nothing but freakish looks and makeup.
They seemed afraid that this article would be more of the same. But it turned out to be the complete opposite.
"The dazzling interplay of six arms elevates even simple tricks into complex artistry... A skeletal body, unconstrained by the limits of muscle and sinew, displays startling nimbleness... A frame three times wider than an ordinary human's provides exceptional stability of center mass... The overwhelming power generated by trapezius and latissimus muscles of a scale no ordinary human could hope to replicate is truly striking."
As Ella read the review aloud, the monsters' expressions grew steadily brighter.
This month's Guide had examined them squarely as acrobats and analyzed their abilities on those terms. The objective scores they'd posted at the Rekachev Circus School exam seemed to have paid off.
The monster members snatched the magazine from Ella's hands and passed it around among themselves, grinning and chuckling. We'd drawn considerable attention from the press lately, but this was the first article that focused on the monster members as individuals. It was no wonder they were thrilled.
We gave them a round of cheers and applause. Even Dosville and Mickey, who'd often been prickly and uncooperative within the troupe, offered their congratulations.
But Ella, who had actually read the article, didn't look nearly as pleased. She seemed glad, but there was something stiff about it.
Once the rest of the troupe went off to run through their rehearsals, I drifted over to her side and asked about it. She let out a small sigh and answered quietly.
"A review like that isn't necessarily good for us."
"Not necessarily good? What do you mean?"
"How far along would you say our current performance is? Percentage-wise?"
I wasn't sure how this connected, but I tossed out an estimate based on what I'd heard a couple of months earlier.
"Hmm, around sixty-five percent?"
"Sixty-seven, to be precise."
"That's a big jump. It was in the upper fifties after the Rose Windmill Cabaret test, wasn't it? A ten percent rise in five months... if we have twenty-one months left, can we fill the remaining thirty-three?"
My question was laced with hope, but she shook her head with firm finality.
"No. At this rate, we'll never reach a hundred percent. Not in a lifetime."
"Why is that?"
She gazed at the troupe members, who were pouring themselves into practice, her expression complicated.
"The theme of our Monster Circus is 'terror.' And terror generally comes from the 'unknown.' The hundred percent I originally talked about — that's the feeling an audience would have if they encountered these performers with no prior knowledge at all."
I saw where she was going.
"Our reputation is the problem."
"Right. By now, our circus has made a name for itself. And that, in turn, chips away at our performance scores. The more famous we get, the harder it'll be for an audience to feel genuine tension — that creeping fear that the Red-Blood Ogre might actually break through the bars and attack them. And that 'unexpected situation' where the emcee gets threatened by the monster members — people will watch it knowing full well it's a scripted bit that's played out across hundreds of shows."
I nodded along with her analysis, but one doubt lingered.
"Rudini's escape show was still entertaining, wasn't it? Even though it followed a similar pattern every time."
I was thinking of the burly old magician we'd seen at the Rose Windmill Cabaret. An escape artist by specialty, he'd repeated a nearly identical repertoire every show. And yet his act was consistently beloved. We'd watched him several nights in a row ourselves and never felt bored.
"True. His magic is always in the same vein. Locked inside an elaborate contraption, a few precarious moments, then a hair's-breadth escape at the last possible second. Tension, conflict, and release — he delivers that with top-tier performance skill and technique, using different props each time. But even if it's a single pattern, his is what you'd call a golden pattern. Our show might follow a single pattern too, but it's different. We're relying on fixed characters and their narrative."
"I see what you mean."
I nodded at her explanation. It was a familiar topic among game broadcasters too.
The fun of a game where you overcome enemies through demanding mechanics and strategies is different from the fun of a game you appreciate for its presentation and story.
The first kind stays entertaining even when you know it inside out; the second kind loses half its impact once you do. The first kind creates fresh tension every time you replay it; the second kind just feels tedious.
"And this magazine article has driven the point home."
"... Yes. I'm grateful they evaluated our members as individual acrobats, but it's weakened the power of the characters they play. If things continue like this, no matter how hard we try over the next twenty months, the opposing forces between our growing fame and our performance craft will just... converge. We'll stall out around seventy percent."
That was far short of what we'd originally hoped for.
"Do you have a solution?"
"Yes. We introduce an 'Interlude.'"
An Interlude. A short piece of entertainment provided to the audience while the stage is being reset for the next scene. Some troupes offered simple dances, songs, comic dialogues, or skits. Others had the emcee engage with the crowd or hawk a sponsor's products.
So far, we'd mostly used that time for crowd interaction. Minova's gift of gab was enough to hold the audience's attention through the gaps.
"But that has its limits. Dance, song, comedy, skits — anything soft and light will work. Weaving one into the Interlude will actually heighten the tension of the main performance."
I agreed. Our current show was too unrelentingly horrific. I'd written scripts tailored to each member's boss stage, but looked at another way, our show was just a collection of Boss Battles.
It had its own intensity, but the loss of pacing — of breathing room between stages — was a weakness. In the original games, the protagonists would often joke around and create a lighthearted mood before a brutal scene crashed in and cranked up the tension. We had none of that here.
An Interlude that replicated that kind of rhythm would make each monster act hit harder.
The problem was, we didn't have an acrobat to handle an Interlude.
"You're not thinking of using Miss Reina, are you? She's made it clear she won't go onstage."
"I know."
"And you can't do it yourself, Miss Ella. Juggling the Deputy Leader's duties and performing would wreck you physically."
"Hmph. Pretending you're worried about me."
She shot me a sidelong glance and gave a soft, derisive snort.
"If you — the troupe leader — or I start fooling around in the Interlude, it could kill the tension of the main show. As far as the public knows, you and I are the ones handling the 'monster angle.' What I'm saying is, we should recruit people who specialize in Interludes. The new year's almost here, isn't it? Once it turns, we can bring on a few more acrobats. Let's reinforce our numbers then."
I nodded. When our reputation was scraping bottom, this wouldn't have been possible, but at our current standing, we could attract capable performers.
"You'd already worked out this solution, hadn't you?"
"Yes. From the moment I saw this month's issue."
"Hmm. Then why were you looking so downcast earlier?"
She glanced at me briefly before answering.
"Seeing the troupe members earn recognition from the industry is a good thing. But I couldn't just be happy about it. Not purely."
I understood. To free herself from me, she had to reach the Circus Grand Prix Finals. So anything that obstructed that — she couldn't help rejecting it, at least in part.
When she first saw the article, she'd surely wanted to celebrate the monsters' achievement. But in the back of her mind, she'd had to start calculating how to keep them looking frightening and unnerving. That internal conflict must have left her disgusted with herself.
I left her alone and stepped outside the tent. Dawn had receded, and morning was creeping in. In four hours, this station's first showing would begin. Starting today, we'd perform three days straight, take one day off, then move on to the next stop.
Screeee.
A hawk's cry rang out. I looked up. Hawk, who'd been out night-hunting, was returning. But his flight pattern and his call were... off. He was sounding a warning.
Thud.
Something heavy landed in the rear courtyard of the theater. The Ratman who'd been working through the small hours and had collapsed on the ground to rest jolted awake with a shriek.
I fixed my gaze on the figure that had vaulted the fence. It wore the shape of a beast's hide draped over a human form, but the thing inside that skin was unmistakably a person.
I'd never seen this outward appearance before, but the Evolution Lab told me I'd made contact with him once in the past. The moment I saw that, I knew who he was.
"You're...?"
"I pay my respects to the Cult Leader!"
Ben Sullivan. The Voodoo Cult Madosa I'd taken under my command back in Wonderland prostrated himself before me.