While all manner of chaos went on in the city, most of the citizens of Penrose went on with their lives none the wiser. It was late so most were sleeping by this point. One woman in her late 20s toiled away in an old estate, sorting through its contents room by room. It had taken months to inventory everything and she was finally getting to stuff in the attic. The place had been in the family for generations, and she'd now inherited it and its contents. Most of it she had no need for, including the house itself. So she'd set to task picking out and packing family heirlooms and valuables. With the end in sight she didn't want to have to come back for one last room. 

There was certainly going to need to be some TLC before she could sell the place. Unsurprisingly for an old creeky structure on the outskirts of town there were rumors and tales that the house was haunted. Weird things would happen as if the place was alive. Melisa didn't entertain such nonsense. The place was old, drafty, and had settled cockeyed over the years. The place had electricity so working at night was trivial. So upstairs she went. Fighting with the door for a minute she managed to pop it free of the leaning door jam. [b]"What a mess."[/b] The room was stacked high with boxes upon boxes. After a long sigh she set to opening each one to see what was inside. Managing to sort though half a dozen she decided to call it quits after all. This one room alone might as well be two or three. Didn't help that is was pretty tightly packed so she couldm't just spread things out. 

Hauling box after box back into stacks, she took one heavy one full of books and set it back in place. She could hear the slight crackle and groan of glass under the weight. Pulling the box back off before she broke anything Malisa plopped it back on the ground. What she thought was just another box was actually a glass case tightly wrapped in canvas. It also weighed a ton so there wasn't any sliding the covering out from under it. Curious the boxcutter made easy work of the woven covering. What she found was probably the creepiest damn thing she'd ever seen. Inside the case was a two foot tall metal marrionette doll. It had a piece missing where its stomach was, though on closer inspection that looked to be a design choice. Oddly the figure didn't appear to be suspended by strings, rather it was held down by chains. 

That should have been enough for anyone to put the tarp back on the thing and head out. Melisa couldn't help herself though and fiddled with the door. The opening itself actually had odd strips of paper with some strange characters scrawled on it. What was this, a horror movie? Over the creepy feeling because of how childish she must have looked, she cut the seals and opened the case. Works like this usually had an artists name or signature on it. Pulling it out and checking around the outside there was nothing. The hollowed out opening in the stomach though had was looked like another of those pieces of paper though. Taking hold of it she was drawing it out when she heard a voice. [color=pink]"Will you be my friend?"[/color] Recoiling and jerking her hand back Melisa looked around for the source of the voice. It sounded like a child. Looking down she had managed to cut her finger on the sharp edges of the doll. She didn't respond to the question and started to close the case. [color=pink]"No? That's okay. We can make friends together."[/color]

The blood on the doll ignited into a pink flame in unison with the cut finger. Panic instantly set in as in seconds her entire hand was seemingly on fire. It didn't hurt, but the spread was too quick to do anything but flail. It wasn't just outside though, the woman felt herself becoming lighter as she was consumed. Soon her entire body was nothing but this pink blaze throughout. Rattling in its case the doll began to draw in the flames through the opening in its torso. Disappearing from sight Melisa began to feel a cold sensation. Her vision that had gone out returned and she stumbled. Something was holding her back. She pulled and fought, breaking loose from the chains that were binding her. As she did her mind was hit and the fear left her. She was free. Everything was weird and huge though. Pretty quickly she realized that she was now the marionette. Eerily this didn't bother her as much as it should. A smile came instead as she loosened all her joints. There was a lot of work to do and she was hungry. The woman might not have wanted to be her friend, but now Melisa just needed to go out and make new ones herself.

[center][hider=The Little Marionette]

[color=pink]You'll be my friend won't you?[/color]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/GZJ8RXx.png[/img][/hider][/center]