Disclaimer:
Fate/Zero, Fables, and their related concepts and ideas are the intellectual properties of Gen Urobuchi, Kinoko Nasu, Nitro+, Type-MOON, Notes Ltd., Bill Willingham, Vertigo Comics and other respective rights holders. This story is written solely for the purpose of entertainment, and not for any sort of monetary profit. If anything, consider this free advertising.
Prologue: Storybook Opening
Family
Freaks
Fables
Epilogue: Postmodern Closing
That Not-So Celebrated Team-Up Special
Prologue:
Storybook Opening
Once Upon A Time in a land far, far away for some and practically in the backyard of others, the sleepy town of Niagara was plagued with murder most foul.
“Give it to me straight, Dyl. How bad is it in there?” As he passed through the cordoned-off doors of the Louis Tussaude Wax Museum that evening, Detective Stanley Caughlan asked as he walked with a tension in his step. While he’d seen a number throughout his career, corpses were still corpses. Doubly so if this was as bad as his personal rumor mill suggested.
“Like something from an underground grindhouse horror flick. If the theme of the thing was decided upon by Art 101 dropouts,” said Officer Carmella Dylan, his rumor mill, as the detective made his approach, “It’s bad, brace yourself.”
“This is great. Really, this is just really, really great. I was just thinking that we sure could use some ritualistic wholesale slaughter to spice things up around here,” he said wearily as he rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Tourist town. There has always been that draw to the strange,” Dylan said with a blasé shrug.
“You know I can’t entirely get used to weird things.” He said these words as if he had to justify himself time and time again to his co-worker. It was an automatic response, one built on a basis of ingrained obligation developed over years, rather than the perception of his pride feeling judged.
“The unusual does have a way of not meeting your expectations.” She shrugged again, keeping her end of the conversation all in perspective.
“Right, my expectations. We all have our coping mechanisms,” Caughlan said, in acknowledgment of her own methods. It was at that moment he became acutely aware of Charlie Chaplin and Elvira’s lifeless eyes boring down into him from all sides. “Are we gonna continue standing around at the mouth of the uncanny valley, or do you wanna lead me further in to the main attraction?”
“It’s right this way,” Dylan said plainly with a gesture to a direction further into the building, past a line of yellow tape.
The detective’s tension came back in full force. If the scene of the crime was closed off all the way to here even this far from the entrance, then that had to mean something. The murder happening on the site of a high-profile location was the least of the factors that came to mind. It was meant to keep out the riff-raff so that the crime scene would not be compromised accidentally by civilians – common sense dictated that the whole place should be locked down so as to preserve as much of the evidence as possible. That much was obvious. No, what “got” the detective was something else entirely, though he’d have one hard time trying to pinpoint exactly what it was.
Call it superstition; call it paranoia; experience or intuition – whatever it may have been it gave him the feeling that that tape had sealed off what happened here from the public eye for more than matters of police regulation and public display decency.
It made him feel that that word repeated on the tape, “Caution,” was a warning directed right to him. Repeated. Ad nauseam. ‘To the point of nausea.’
Nauseous.
He had no time to feel sick over this, now or in the future. So he encouraged himself to keep focused on talking, focused on the task at hand.
“Funny that you bring up valleys,” Dylan said, more than willing to do her part to help the both of them out in this, “Something about this all reminds me of a book.”
“…that has something to do with valleys? ‘Valley of death,’ ‘fear no evil?’ Biblical elements?” Caughlan asked.
The officer’s head shook. “Not the right literary reference.” A door was pushed open, and the bizarre brutality of what had transpired here in the museum came to full light.
“Think Carrollian,” she said.
A heavy smell hung in the air of the room. Not of rot, although a thoughtful whiff of the odor would not convince anyone who smelt it that the room’s former occupants were anything close to alive. No, it was something like an herbal dampness, more like what would be expected from a musty spice cabinet. In the very center of the room, just shy of a half dozen of bodies encircled a laden dining table. A roughly even mix of sexes, some remained seated upright in their chairs, while others had slouched over onto their plates of cookies and sandwiches set for this tea party before the rigor mortis set in. Blood had spilled forth erratically from multiple wounds and pooled into misshapen puddles on the floor beneath chair legs and on the tablecloth. Contorted expressions of inscrutable emotion wracked each one of the bodies’ faces.
Each and every corpse was dressed as a literary character, a figure from the novels of Lewis Carroll’s magna opera. Each sported a wickedly sized, crudely sutured incision somewhere on their body. The quantity of gore from each of these wounds would suggest that it was the primary cause for death by bleed-out, though that would have to be properly confirmed via autopsy. The only ones who would know for certain until then would be the stripped bare wax statues of this wing, the silent witnesses whose clothes had seemingly been plundered to be used as part of the killing’s procedure.
None but the statues and the killers themselves.
“I’m sorry, Dylan, but what the fuck are you on about to even associate valleys with ‘Alice?’ ” Caughlan asked, meanwhile momentarily distracted from the macabre display by his associate’s logical contortions.
To that, she merely shrugged, “Valley somewhere in Wonderland. Lord knows the place has to be big enough.”
The man opened his mouth to say something. He held his tongue for that and opted to ask something more productive.
“Cult angle?” he asked.
“Cult angle,” she nodded in agreement.
“ ‘Keep Niagara weird,’ huh?” As he took in the sight before him, Caughlan chuckled under his breath scornfully.
“You can think that as much as you want,” Dylan replied, “But, the next one who says that to me gets thrown in the river within spitting distance of the falls.”
Because it was Carmella ‘Tinkerbell’ Dylan who said that, Caughlan made damn sure to spread the word around when they got back to the precinct.
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“Multi-Man Massacre at the Wax Museum!”
“Gruesome Real-life Gore Show at Tussaude’s!”
“Keeping Niagara Weird?”
For such a sensationally-charged mass murder, it did not stay in the mind of the public for long. Those who had bought the papers would be convinced that the stories were Enquirer levels of trashy. They were convinced that the editors and writers were victims of mass hysteria, a vicious rumor that had blown into town on the wind and went over the edge of the falls, to meet an untimely fate like so many unfortunate daredevils who had come to Niagara over the years. If one had asked around about Niagara’s so-called “crime of the century,” they would be given confused looks, and maybe a reply that asked if they were talking about something that happened in a story. The truth had been buried for the sake of secrecy of many parties, and the lives lost reduced to fiction.
In order for there to be a cover-up, there first had to be a cleanup, and this was the job of the Enforcers, human and legend alike.
For Bigby Wolf, this was a rare opportunity to stretch out his legs and hunt.
For Natalia Kaminski and Kiritsugu Emiya’s relationship, this was a turning point.
So here it is. The start of a short tribute that combines my favorite fandom with one of my favorite comics of all time (or at least during the Adversary run, but let's not go off on that tangent here in these ANs) that hopefully meshes into a cohesive and thematically apropos whole. Sorry for it being so short and OC heavy, I promise that they'll either be very relevant or non-distracting from the story at large.
Because I was sitting on this intro in some shape or form for about a year with little progress, for reasons that include waiting to see how The Wolf Among Us panned out, how the comic proper will finish its run, and miscellaneous real life issues that kept this from being a thing sooner, after deciding there was nothing more I could do to it that wouldn't needlessly delay it further, I felt it best to get this off my chest so that I could get to the actual as-advertised Fables and Type-MOON crossing over.
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Originally Posted by Kieran
