My golems were making a mess of the prison, though some had gone off in a different direction for some reason. I didn't find out why until later, though I'm glad they brought back what they found. But that's for later.
While I was searching the prison for signs of Mom, Dad, and Uncle Murray, I did come across someone else...and that was an interesting meeting.
As Coco raced through the halls of the prison with chaos - and her golems - raging all around her, she was caught off guard as she heard a familiar voice calling out to her. "Chile? Little Coco, is that you?"
Turning, Coco's eyes widened in surprise. "Ms. Ruby!" she called out, rushing over to the open cell. "You're alright!"
Ms. Ruby chuckled as she leaned back in her cell. "And look at you, lil' lady! Done up proper for callin' the spirits. This mess your doing?"
Coco nodded slowly. "Yeah. I...I used earth magic and my anger to animate some golems to trash the prison to get Mom, Dad, and Uncle Murray out."
"Yeah, ah heard they were locked up here," Ms. Ruby murmured softly. "Wouldn'a believed it if I hadn't seen 'em dragging Miss Fox off. But...whadda ya mean 'some golems'?" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
Coco wilted under that gaze. "I...I only managed to raise 50. I...hope that's not too disappointing..."
Ms. Ruby stared at Coco, her eyes wide...and then burst into laughter. "First time...makin' constructs...and she..." Ms. Ruby gasped for breath amongst her laughter. "And the lil' lady...thinks only 50 is disappointing!" By the time she got her laughter under control, she saw how Coco had wilted in on herself and shook her head. "Coco, I been working my magics for decades...and I'd still hesitate ta work with golems. Even if I did, I'd have a hard time getting one ta do what I wanted. Ya got 50 at your age on yer first try, and they ain't killed no one! Golems powered by rage...historically, they always end in massacres. But yours...they self repair, they don't kill..." She shook her head in amazement. "Knew ya were natural born ta this magic...but I'm stunned."
Coco let out a sigh of relief. "I was worried I hadn't lived up to your expectations."
"I'ma stop expectin' things from ya, cause I'll never be able to judge 'em accurately," Ms. Ruby stated firmly.
"So...where's Muggshot?" Coco asked curiously. "And The Panda King?"
Ms. Ruby grinned. "Soon as they tried ta feed Panda King that spice, he refused ta eat. When they tried ta force him, he shouted 'Blazing Soul' and got covered in flames hot enough to melt metal. Then he just walked out. I knew the spice ta be devil's work, but my blood's too cold for it ta work on me. Muggshot's still in his cell, and he cuts the outside of his meat - where the spice is - off before eatin'."
"How come you're both still here?" Coco asked curiously.
"Just cause the warden's corrupt don't mean our sentence is over," Ms. Ruby explained logically. "We want out by the law, so we can be there for ya." Smiling, she brought her hand down to her somewhat swollen abdomen. "Sides...after that last blackout a few months ago...well, I ain't in no condition to go runnin' nowhere, and Muggshot ain't about ta go off without me. Just keep the golems away from the foundations over here, kay?"
Coco grinned with a happy squeal, nodding eagerly. Steeling herself, she dashed off to complete her mission.
My talk with Ms. Ruby helped me feel a little bit better, but my work wasn't done yet. I...I could feel what my golems discovered, and knew that Neyla was nowhere in range. But the Contessa still was, and I'd learned enough to discover she was working for the Klaaw Gang all along. Which meant I had to confront her.
And I knew just how to do it...
The Contessa leapt up onto the walkway on the prison's outer wall, being careful where she stepped. The holes in the walls were already making footing precarious, and the golems had ripped her giant water tower battle robot to pieces as soon as it activated. Now she had to get to her escape blimp as fast as she could before one of those golems got hold of her and tore her apart.
"Going somewhere?"
That voice, coming from her blimp of all places, stopped her in her tracks. Stepping off the blimp was the pony that Neyla had privately warned her about, the one that Cooper and Carmelita were raising together. "This...this is all your doing, isn't it?" she hissed out as she backed up a few steps as she reached to her sides. She'd left some of her thread along the walltops for emergencies, making a web she could use. All she needed to do was keep Coco distracted long enough to not notice what she was doing.
"Yes," Coco confirmed calmly. "Those are my golems...filled with the rage, pain, and sorrow of having my family torn apart and taken away from me. And they have two targets they're searching for specifically to unleash that rage upon. Neyla's one of them. And you're the other."
"Is...is that supposed to frighten me, child?" the Contessa countered, managing to recover her usual urbane tone somewhat. "You really expect me to believe you're going to kill me?"
"I don't want you dead...not yet," Coco responded coldly. "First, I need to get my Mom off the hook...which means I need to get you to talk."
The Contessa laughed as she found a strand of her web. "I'm done talking!" she snapped as she yanked on it, only for a sewing needle to get stuck in the chitin of her lower body. "What the-?"
Smirking, Coco gave her cane a sharp tug. The altered web collapsed around the Contessa, wrapping her up until she couldn't move, leaving her hanging off the inner edge of the wall by a thick rope attached to Coco's cane hook. "Really? Thread, against a combat seamstress? I expected better."
The Contessa started to struggle, but stopped as she looked down and saw several golems gathering, their featureless faces turning glowing red eyes up towards her, hands of stone reaching up to grasp her. "W-what do you think you're doing? Pull me up!"
"Not just yet," Coco murmured softly. "First, I need you to talk." She held up a tape recorder. "You're going to confess your every crime, of your own free will. Then we'll talk about pulling you up."
The Contessa suppressed a smirk. The child was such a fool, if she thought any Interpol precinct would accept evidence provided by a criminal. Still, if playing along got her away from those...things, then it was worth it. Here in Prague, fear of the golem was simply too ingrained to brush away. "Alright, I'll talk."
Smiling, Coco pushed the record switch, and the tape began to turn. "Now, this confession is given freely and of your own will, without coercion of any sort?" Coco asked carefully.
The spider woman rolled her eyes, but played along. "Yes, this truth is told of my own will."
"Start at the beginning, then," Coco stated calmly.
"It starts with my late husband the admiral," the Contessa explained. "His death wasn't intentional, whatever the rumors declare, but it was my fault." She chuckled softly. "He was old, I was young...and his heart wasn't as up to it as the rest of him was. Need I go on?"
"Not in that area," Coco replied, her tone showing she wasn't quite following but was certain others would.
"However, his death was my awakening to the less legal side of the world," the Contessa continued. "Using his fortune, I built the prison, seeing what I could do with criminals when I had free reign. I used my hypnotic abilities to brainwash former criminals into becoming productive citizens...and part of their 'rehabilitation' process was telling me where they'd hidden all the loot that Interpol wasn't aware they'd stolen, giving me what I needed to acquire it for myself, and then forgetting all about it. It was surprisingly easy. It was no surprise when I was scouted for the Klaaw Gang."
"So you're a member?" Coco asked carefully. "What other members do you know about?"
"Just three that haven't been arrested yet," she replied. "Arpeggio, Jean Bison, and Neyla."
"Constable Neyla is in the Klaaw Gang?" Coco asked in surprise.
The Contessa chuckled darkly. "She's the one who recruited me. She's also the one gathering the Clockwerk parts that were stolen and scattered, why I don't know. Just as I don't know who's actually in charge of the Gang." Seeing Coco turn off the recorder, she smirked. "So that's enough for you?"
"Yup, that should be more than enough to put you away for life and put Neyla on the run," Coco confirmed.
"Good luck getting any Interpol agent to listen to that recording," the Contessa snapped, then winced. She hadn't meant to say that until after she was pulled up.
"Oh, they already were," Coco explained. "There's a transmitter in this recorder, and I have a friend in Mom's old precinct who was listening to - and recording - every word. And it's perfectly admissible, just as if I was wearing a wire." She grinned widely as she saw the Contessa's eyes widen. "And that just leaves us with one thing."
"...pulling me up to face my sentence?" the Contessa asked morosely.
"Not quite," Coco replied, laying across her cane and pulling out her sewing shears. "You see...those golems down there? Powered by my rage, pain, and sorrow...the darkest parts of my soul, without any conscience to guide them. I have to wonder...when I'm like that, at my absolute darkest...am I capable of cold blooded murder?" She smiled down at the Contessa. "What do you think?" When the Contessa only stared up at her in fear, Coco chuckled. "It's important to know that about yourself, wouldn't you say?" She brought the shears down to the rope holding the Contessa up. "Let's find out."
She cut the rope.
The Contessa screamed in absolute terror as she fell into the grasp of the murderous golems...who reshaped themselves around her into a solid block of stone that encased her entire body and covered her eyes and ears, leaving her enough room to breathe and scream but nothing else.
"Hmm..." Coco murmured as the spider continued to scream in terror. "Even at my darkest...I can be childishly cruel, but I don't have it in me to kill in cold blood. Even golems powered only of my hate won't kill the object of that hatred. ...I can't tell if that should be comforting or disconcerting."
Of course, setting things up so the Contessa would get arrested didn't magically clear Mom's name, much as I would have wanted it to. Still, my golems had found Mom - and the Clockwerk Eyes - at the Contessa's Castle, and brought both back along with Dad and Uncle Murray...who still had the half of the Clockwerk Heart he got from Rajan. I didn't ask how he'd kept it hidden from the Contessa.
Besides, a more important conversation was taking place back at the van...
"Coco!" Carmelita gasped in shock as she caught sight of her equine daughter. "What is that thing you're...not wearing?"
Coco groaned, rolling her eyes. "Mom! This is a traditional priestess garb for using dark powers to channel the spirits of the earth!"
"Well channel them in something respectable!" Carmelita snapped out angrily. "No daughter of mine is going to run around a prison looking like a back alley whore!"
"That's culturally insensitive!" Coco complained.
"There's a difference between being a good parent and being PC," Carmelita countered sharply. "Guess which I'm trying to be?"
"I'm in full agreement with your mother there, Coco," Sly spoke up. "That outfit just draws attention to how little you're wearing. It's practically begging to be picked up by someone unscrupulous."
"But I need it to keep the golems under control!" Coco whined.
"Uh...not so sure about that," Bentley pointed out, beckoning everyone over to his Binoc-U-com.
At the prison, Interpol agents had arrived to clean up and arrest the Contessa. As soon as they were in position, the golems released the Contessa and the other guards they'd been holding and marched to the center of the courtyard. Once there, they began to march in a circle until all were in a perfect circle. Raising their hands, each golem drove one stony finger into the back of the golem in front of them, obliterating the Aleph that was engrave deep in. All their eyes went dark at once.
"There you have it, golems are under control," Sly concluded. "Now go get changed!"
Coco grumbled petulantly as she climbed into the van.
Carmelita slumped against the side of the van. "And now this on top of everything else? I thought the rebellious phase didn't kick in until puberty..."