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In the end, it isn’t Yumi who needs to be saved. After all the times Paris came to her rescue, both for being in places she shouldn’t have been and being in places she was meant to be, it is him that needs saving.
Tall, pale, and always seeming so confident to her younger self, not realizing that he was as lost as she had been. She had been too young.
And counting the years after his creation, all spent being a weapon to cut down the next target he was pointed at and not out enjoying the joys of being alive only to afterwards be locked in a box not expecting to see the light of day again, he had been even younger.
They had tried their best, but it hadn’t been enough. They had been young, far too young with limited information to go off of, even with Yumi’s minor foresight abilities.
Paris, dangerous and unfeeling and everything else he claimed to be, had willingly stood between her and danger. Like always.
There had been too many toys, too many attacks to keep track of. And he fell.
But that time, he didn’t get back up.
Yumi had been nineteen and the world crashed around her, piece by piece.
And the Clown, Paris’ mirror counterpart in this whole mess and the mastermind behind all the toys’ tactics, had created even more still.
Yumi is 23 years old and tired. Tired of the hunt. Tired of the searching and searching and searching.
The Clown has dozens of toys and creations by his side, all unwilling to face their end but unwilling to end the pain and suffering they created.
And Yumi had been alone, at age nineteen.
But Yumi is twenty-three now, and somehow both more and less alone than she had ever been. She has her own army now, an army of ghosts willing to help her on the mission she now carries on her shoulders.
She’s discovered a lot about her abilities in these last four years, enough to end this. She wills it to end.
A flutter like a butterfly’s wings caresses at the edges of her mind, her foreknowledge. This will end. Somehow, someway, it will all end today.
The final clash – and isn’t that a laugh? – takes place in a mansion. Certainly an upgrade from the days of hiding away in the sewers.
So they clash, the Clown and his creations, and Yumi and her ghosts.
And so they clash. The entire fight, battle, massacre - whatever you want to call it- is a blur of attacks and colorful auras.
Through it all, Yumi searches for red. Red, like Paris, who was no longer here -
But in all the chaos of the clash, distracted as she is to keep eye on all the threats and searching for the Clown, she doesn’t pay any mind to the grandfather clock positioned next to one of the mansion’s many pillars. It’s aura blending in amongst all the other auras in the room.
An experiment. A failure. Going unnoticed until this battle.
A toy, or maybe many of them, manages to push the long, heavy clock over in an attempt to catch her by surprise. The clock lands with a heavy bang! sections of the antique wood cracking on impact.
Paris would have taunted them for their lack of intelligence and speed and other casual, condescending remarks – everything and anything he could find a flaw in, really – stop. Focus!
She spots the Clown out of the corner of her eye, but she’s not fast enough.
Her blood splatters on stone floors, but her entire focus is on the Clown and the ghosts that clamber over his body, unseen by all but her. And then they start to eat.
One of the abilities she learned was not actually an ability of her own, but more learning more about the ghosts that are a part of her daily life.
Just like parasitic poltergeists, they too can feed off a person’s energy.
And his form starts falling apart- like Paris on that final, horrible day - and she can see the moment the puppet realizes his destruction is imminent.
She doesn’t let him think on it too long. Yumi pulls out the knife – Paris’ knife – and slashes through Polakov’s porcelain body.
He’s slower, the ghosts’ drain on his energy is working, and she doesn’t stop.
Not until every last bit of red aura is gone, down a ghosts’ throat.
Triumphant over the success of the plan, Yumi doesn’t see how her blood pools at her feet, nor how the grandfather clock glows brighter under the red splatters.
“We won, Paris, “she tells him.
A toy, or maybe many of them, jab at her with sharp implements, but she’s too tired to care.
More of her blood splashes down and the clock glows brighter still. The corners of her vision darken and she collapses with what is maybe the sound of her name.
---
One moment, she’s weightless. Images flash before her, the Clown, the toys. Paris.
She sobs.
Oh, Paris. He never got to experience a life without his Mission looming over his shoulder.
The next moment, she’s heavy. Yumi can feel the pull of gravity, the heaviness of her limbs, something isn’t right.
Her senses are murky and she has her eyes open before she even registers that she can see. Her eyes burn.
One breath, then another, and the fog over her mind clears. Her strength returns to her and gravity returns to normal. She can move.
Yumi stares at a familiar, dull ceiling.
She isn’t laying on a cold, stone floor in a puddle of her own blood and surrounded by fragments of broken toys. She’s indoors, yes, but not in a strange mansion made to look like a horror movie set.
She’s in her room.
A ghost’s memory? But it’s her own room, from her childhood. And she was dead.
Can a ghost get trapped in their own memory?
Yumi sits up and looks about the room. If it’s an illusion or vision, she knows how to break out of those. The solidity of objects falls apart when you leave it’s epicenter.
She tosses off her comforter and lands on the floor with a stumble. The floor had been further than expected.
Walking feels off, but Yumi regains her balance easily and soon enough, she’s sprinting out of her room, her door slamming against the wall. Down the stairs, past the door to the basement and out the front door.
Yumi stops.
She looks at the dark street, illuminated only by moonlight and the occasional streetlight. Looks one way, and then the other, but she can’t see the edge of the memory.
It’s impossible that the memory bubble is this huge. All memories and visions have a short range, so short you can literally walk out of it if you ever felt the need.
Walking out of her childhood home should have been enough.
Yumi presses her hand to her mouth, thoughtful. But with her hand so close to her face, Yumi notices something different.
She spreads her hands before her.
They’re small. Tiny, really.
Yumi stares, numb with disbelief.
“Yumi!” she hears Nora’s voice behind her, from the door. But she can’t move. She stares at her small hands, so pale and even more so in the moonlight.
She hears the running of footsteps through soggy grass and then Nora is skidding to a stop in front of Yumi, whipping around to look at her.
“Yumi, are you okay?! The door was unlocke- Why are you out here?” She asks Yumi. Her hands pat Yumi’s shoulders and cheeks, checking her over.
But all Yumi can do is stare.
She opens her mouth to speak, so say something, anything. Nora was alive.
That’s impossible.
She looks back to the house where Atsuko has joined them, crouching to take a better look at Yumi’s face.
That’s impossible.
Neither of her parents has had to crouch to look at Yumi in years. Partially because they’re dead. Another casualty in the long war against the possessed toys.
They can’t be here, looking at Yumi, staring at her in worry because she walked out of the house in the middle of the night without warning.
They can’t be.
Atsuko tugs Yumi into her arms and she’s warm and real and here. Yumi stares at her hands, her tiny, tiny hands, and brings them to her face. She pats her face, still round with baby fat, and feels her small nose. They’re real, too.
Yumi is eleven with tiny hands, but also she’s nineteen with a broken world. And she’s twenty-three, surrounded by broken toys and broken dreams.
But mostly, right now, she’s eleven with tiny hands. So she presses her tiny hands to her face and cries into her mother’s embrace.
This time, Yumi promises, things will go differently.
---
Long after Nora and Atsuko have put Yumi to bed, she sneaks out of her room for the second time that night. But this time, she makes sure to be especially quiet.
She goes to the basement.
She has to make sure. That it’s real. That she's in the past.
That Paris is here, too.
Alive.
It’s easy enough to find the box Paris is in, she knows where she found it. But when she places her hand on it, to open it, she hesitates.
The memory of Paris, face down on the ground, flashes before her eyes. Faux skin melting off his body, leaving only broken porcelain behind.
Her vision blurs. Tears prick hotly in her eyes, and she ducks her head as they roll down her cheeks.
If she woke him up now, would things be any way different? Would they be able to win?
Can she guarantee his survival?
She can’t.
Yumi stumbles back, out of the basement. Back into her room.
She can’t.
And leaves Paris behind.
She really can’t.
---
Yumi spends the next day contemplating.
She’s quiet, and she knows it worries Nora. But it’s also been two days since Grandpa’s funeral. Yumi lets them draw their own conclusions.
It’s not like she isn’t mourning.
So she thinks, and thinks, and thinks. Because if Nora and Atsuko and Paris and Iris and Lily, too, oh God, they’re all alive- if they’re alive then, Polakov is too.
Along with all the other possessed creations.
So Yumi thinks, and thinks, and finally hatches a plan. A plan that she can execute on her own. Mostly.
The next day, Yumi asks for permission to play in the front yard. And the next day. And the day after that, too.
She starts by waving at the woman that always jogs by their house at nine in the morning. And to the old couple that set up their lawn chairs on their front lawn for tea every day at noon.
Soon, the silent, almost shy, waves evolve to actual greetings and then to short conversations that lead to informal introductions.
Yumi brings up a show she’s been watching – or had been, at this age – and accepts their recommendations and makes sure to follow through. And brings them up at the next opportunity.
When there’s no one around to notice, Yumi walks up to the ghosts that linger in and around her childhood home. She talks to any ghosts that will listen. She tells them of the toys and the dangers and the cries of children in the dark of night. She talks until her throat grows sore and even more past that.
Most grow bored of her tales, most walk away. But some don’t.
And to those few, Yumi shows them drawings of the cursed toys, both present and future. She’s too young to be going off on her own without supervision, but no one is watching the ghosts. Some promise to keep an eye out.
It’s not enough, but it’s a start.
---
It’s when a neighbor laments their lack of time that Yumi spots an opportunity.
She offers to get their groceries for them since they’re so busy and all.
It takes a bit of persuasion and wheedling, but they hesitantly agree. Yumi is small, even for an eleven-year-old, but she’s twenty-three and has been buying her own groceries for years.
Accomplishing the chore is laughably easy compared to hunting possessed creations and stray poltergeists, and it’s the beginning of a pattern.
Yumi only smiles and collects her meager payments. All going as planned.
Then a ghost returns with news of a possessed toy.
Yumi listens patiently as they describe the toy soldier and it’s grotesque transformation. She waits until it’s story is done before escorting the ghost into her room.
And then she walks them through the process of eating auras.
---
One day, Nora comes from the antique shop with a present, in hopes of making Yumi feel more at home. It’s an old teddy bear, with signs of wear and tear and missing patches of fur.
It’s also surrounded in an aura, invisible to anyone except her.
Yumi takes the teddy bear, and smiles.
Welcome back, dear teddy, she wants to say. She doesn’t.
The next week involves visits from various helpful ghosts, reporting toy sightings and teaching them to eat auras, with different levels of success.
Yumi soothes ruffled feathers and wails of disappointment with reassurances that there will be plenty of time to practice. With dear, old Teddy as the very unwilling, and very helpful assistant.
By the end of the week, most ghosts can eat the aura from a cursed toy at a decent pace. Faster, if they group together.
The corners of her mouth curl up and Yumi smiles a smile meant to hide sharp teeth on a being much older than her.
---
She’s ‘helping’ cook pancakes for breakfast one morning, when a ghost sidles up beside her and whispers about a dark section of the sewers where piles of human skulls live. And of the clown that lives there.
Yumi excuses herself from the kitchen and makes her way to her room.
The ghost, in it’s whispering, broken voice, expands on it’s observations.
The clown and the few toys they had been able to see from afar, not daring to wander closer. That section of the sewers held enough skeletons for a small army. And none of them had died happily.
Is it so surprising that a crowd of ghosts waited alongside their remains, waiting for their murderers to reach their own end?
No, not really.
Yumi considers her options. Thinks of the metal chest in the basement where Paris sleeps. Thinks of his constant resentment on his given Mission.
And she makes her decision.
“Ask them if any are interested in getting revenge, “Yumi tells the ghost. She directs the ghost to bring any interested ghosts to the closest park in the neighborhood.
While the ghost goes off to do just that, Yumi counts the bills and coins from all the chores and favors she has done for the neighbors.
She takes her savings, and buys herself a pair of beautiful, red shoes.
The next day, Yumi takes her notes, her drawings, and a closed shoebox to the park.
It’s a bit tougher working with angry ghosts than the usual, sad variety, but it isn’t anything Yumi hasn’t experienced before, in the future, and by the end of it, there’s a pair of melting shoes on the concrete. And a large crowd of ghosts very willing, and now very capable, on exacting revenge on the possessed toys that cut their lives short.
---
Every ghost at her disposal is stationed around the section of sewer the Clown is camping out in. And they start eating.
On their own, ghosts cannot eat auras quickly. Even poltergeists, who are the ones that you are more likely to find feeding off humans, are usually very slow eaters.
But with the hundreds of ghosts focused on just feeding off of the Clown and the Clown only? It goes very, very fast.
Yumi herself is there, having sneaked out in the middle of the night, to personally direct them. And she watches the red aura shrink at an astonishing rate, until the spark of life is snuffed out. Like any simple, household candle.
It’s incredibly anticlimactic, really. Nothing like the grimy battle of the future.
But Paris is alive.
Following that, it’s even simpler to do away with the other toys hidden away in the sewers. Paris and the Clown had always had larger auras than any of the other toys they came across. They have less energy for the ghosts to feed on, and thus the ghosts go through them much faster.
And then they start with toys that are loose, out on their own, like the red shoes and Yumi’s Teddy had been. The ghosts spread out, with Yumi only needing to interject to make sure they spread out enough.
But mostly, Yumi leaves them to it.
She heads home, up the stairs, and into her room. And mourns and rejoices in turns.
It’s over.
---
Occasionally, Yumi gets reports on which toys to check off the list, and the list is rapidly diminishing.
She, herself, smiles and introduces herself to her new babysitter, Lily Lalah. And silently takes care of a haunted camera in a young, teenage girl’s room.
There’s no need for that to escalate any further.
Yumi is playing with a non-possessed stuffed animal in the backyard when a ghost hesitantly shuffles in her direction.
The ghost asks her, in it’s murmuring voice, if she would like the ‘other one’ taken care of, and it takes Yumi a moment to understand what they’re referring to. Then she smiles.
“No, “she says, “This one is mine.”
---
It is on the day Yumi checks off the last toy off her list - minus the future possessed toys that now will never exist - that she once again heads down to the basement and pulls out the small, metal chest from behind much larger boxes.
She considers bringing the whole box with her, but decides against it.
Instead, she gently pulls him out of his custom made jailcell and takes him with her. She makes the familiar trek up the stairs and into her room.
It’s time for Paris to wake up. To a world without his imposed life mission.
And wake he does, startled and disoriented and confused, but so very alive.
“Hi, I’m Yumi Wright, “she introduces herself, “Do you have a name?” She asks, like she doesn’t know.
She watches him transform with a puff of smoke and her eyes trail up.
He stands tall, arms folded in a manner that is so painfully nostalgic, as he smiles a smile meant to hide sharp teeth.
“My name is Paris, Paris the Puppet.”
It’s a struggle to keep the fondness from her expression, but she doesn’t have to keep herself from smiling back. And for that, she is grateful.
“It’s nice to meet you, Paris.”