Princess Donut

Part 1 — from pet to Princess

Donut gets a crawler number of her own in ch. 2, eats the Enhanced Pet Biscuit from Carl's hand in ch. 5, and emerges talking in ch. 6–ch. 7 as exactly the cat she was with a vocabulary: charisma 25, constitution 2, a grand champion's sense of her own standing, and a tiara she puts on without reading. Her first act outside the guild is to stop Carl leaving (ch. 8) with the most honest speech in the book — she is scared, she does not want to be alone, and she saw him looking at cat-friendly apartments.

The floor gives her two powers and a want. Magic Missile makes her the party's damage (ch. 8, ch. 10); charisma makes her its diplomat — the goblins named B.A., Face and Murdock, the shamankas sobbing in her lap (ch. 15), Tally's five plates of salmon. The want is the show: 'I want on that show, Carl' from ch. 9 on, a catchphrase, screen time, a boss box. She will not use her claws because it is not ladylike (ch. 13, ch. 23) until the Juicer has Carl by the throat (ch. 24), when she opens his neck and is nearly killed for it, then performs a death scene that introduces Ferdinand. She reads Carl better than he reads himself: 'How is it I know what you're going to do before you do?' (ch. 27).

Part 2 — the natural

Odette's couch is her world the way the corridors are Carl's (ch. 28): she interviews the producer, invents an elective feline monarchy, winks at a galaxy, and promises to kill things with style. Carl sees the hunger and knows it is a problem, and it is — she checks her follower count during a grub siege (ch. 37), acts stiffly casual for her first viewer (ch. 31), and is only briefly deflated when the Maestro's gift is for Carl alone (ch. 43).

But the second floor is also where she does the work. Second Chance makes her a necromancer who finds the dead disgusting (ch. 30, ch. 32); Puddle Jumper makes Plan Pied Piper hers (ch. 33) — 'My first solo mission'; she drags Carl's broken body out of the fire by his cloak (ch. 35) and, drunk on fairy smoothie, tells him she loves him less than Bea and Ferdinand and then that she lied about being fine alone (ch. 34). She makes a friend of a terrified kua-tin over Gossip Girl (ch. 36) with a Chuck-and-Blair line that makes Carl laugh just after his outburst could have got them killed.

She chooses Mongo against Carl's advice (ch. 46) and mothers him with unexpected patience (ch. 47). And she has heard Mordecai tell Carl to leave her before the ninth floor (ch. 44); she says so, small-voiced, and he does not answer.

The choice

Donut's first act on the third floor is her most consequential and her most theatrical: 'Cat. Final answer,' then a fake Artist Alley pick and a real Former Child Actor one, taking the Manager benefit that chains Mordecai to her — 'And scene' (ch. 1). She spends the floor immune to poison, a Character Actor borrowing a merchant class, with a Cockroach skill that will save her life while she sleeps.

The partner

Carl says 'He's not your child, Donut. He's a pet' and regrets it; she says 'Partner' (ch. 5). The floor keeps proving her: the sentry kill from a roof, the reconnaissance of the circus, 'Sic 'em'; Second Chance on a mold lion and Clockwork Triplicate on the zombie (ch. 7); the master negotiator at five general stores (ch. 14); the fan-box photograph of Bea that she loves and Carl no longer minds (ch. 17); the decision — hers — to finish GumGum's quest because GumGum died for it (ch. 17); Tucker destroyed on air (ch. 19); the overacted bait over the spy scroll (ch. 21). Carl watches her hide her cunning behind a camera face and worries she inherited it from Bea's mother (ch. 12).

She loses a day to Water Lily and wakes dreaming of Ferdinand as a porcupine (ch. 12), tells a galaxy that Ferdinand, a moggie, is the love of her life, and Carl tells it his name was Gravy Boat (ch. 19), and asks Carl to promise she will not die alone (ch. 17) — then holds him to it: 'We do this together' (ch. 23). Under the glass case, waiting to die, she says the thing she has been pretending not to know: 'I'm not as dumb as I pretend to be. I know she's dead' (ch. 24). The next chapter takes her tiara to ash (ch. 25). She ends the floor level 26, seventh on the leaderboard, wanted by Lucia Mar and by Hekla, and outraged about a Celestial box (epilogue).

The negotiator

Football Hooligan in six minutes (ch. 1); a Bopca talked from 50,000 to 37,500 and then paid with a coupon, so that Wendita cries (ch. 2); a mallet at 150 (ch. 4); 'You're a terrible negotiator, Carl.' Her Character Actor bug — skills kept across floors — is the party's quiet advantage, and Hole, the spell she thinks useless, becomes Surprise One, Two and Three — Mongo's jaws, a dropped bomb, and Carl's hand for a war mage's head (ch. 12) — and a door for clockwork Mongos (ch. 14). Love Vampire at Charisma 100 (ch. 15); level 33 by the end.

The skull

Three cherries at the Desperado Club and a Knife Sharpener's dagger in her back; her Cockroach skill holds and she opens his throat (ch. 8). She sobs — 'Nobody is going to like me now' — and Carl sees she has never blinked at a monster but a person is different (ch. 9). The Savage box's PVP coupons she buries and throws away, and goes to Imani about, not Carl (ch. 18, ch. 20): 'She’s like a child, Carl. She doesn’t process things the way a person does.' D'nadia's goggles make her look like Bea and turn Magic Missile into four lasers (ch. 15); with them she sees Hekla's invisible bolts (ch. 22).

Hekla

She worships Hekla — the Donut Kick, the dream of fighting beside her (ch. 5, ch. 21) — and when Hekla shoots Katia she fires first (ch. 22), and says the thing the book has been circling: 'You made her feel special and loved, but you just wanted to use her and trade her in' (ch. 23). Carl realises why it hits her so hard, and it has to wait. Second Chance on Hekla's corpse and three clockwork Heklas to hold the door (ch. 24). Then a submarine, a lap dance, the Princess Posse, six hundred hats laid at her feet (ch. 20, ch. 28), a rebuke Carl deserved about Katia (ch. 14), and a ride through a wall to a man she would not abandon: 'Who do you think I am? Miss Beatrice?' (ch. 34). She spins the wheel for the fifth floor (epilogue).

Glass Cannon

Character Actor makes Donut a Glass Cannon in a sandstorm — everything but the constitution — so no more riding Mongo into battle (ch. 1). Her spells grow with the class: Hole reaches through security doors and takes deadbolts out of walls (ch. 6), Puddle Jumper carries four people the length of a street (ch. 7), Second Chance raises a level-50 head (ch. 11), Astral Paw knocks a gnome off the rim of a hole (ch. 12). She reads changelings' heads through her upgraded sunglasses (ch. 9, ch. 10), diagnoses the AI's 'blue balls' (ch. 13), and, when Carl forms his fist over Chris, opens the street under him instead: 'Not a person killer, at least' (ch. 14).

Merch

The highest sponsorship bid in the series' history buys her a robot of herself that quotes Garfield and explodes (ch. 13, ch. 15); the doll named Ivy on Zev's word is the instrument of Loita's death (ch. 18), and Donut's alibi for Carl at the liaison's desk is that his plans always go wrong (ch. 19). She loses Zev to a purchase and does not get to say goodbye (ch. 17); Loita threatens to feed Mongo to a mob and make her watch. She reads the social board until it worries Carl.

The water

Over a Scroll of Water Breathing she announces that 'Cats do not swim' (ch. 2). Buried, blasted out of a sandcastle and drowned, she wakes underwater in Carl's arms screaming like an outboard motor, casts 'Hekla' on a beluga corpse to feed the sharks, and vomits a live fish in a kayak (ch. 23). She flies a biplane with her paws (ch. 31), heals a god's puppy from a house in a lightning storm (ch. 29), empties a tail gun into Quan Ch, and is singed black by a god's face. She tears into Maggie in the quest chat on Chris's behalf (ch. 29) and ends the floor fourth, level 39 and outpaced by Carl, which worries him, with a Belt of Buoyancy she will never use: 'I think you're crazy […] Straitjacket crazy' (ch. 31).

Legendary Diva

Ten minutes in a booth and Donut is a Legendary Diva, a bard who cannot sing (ch. 1, ch. 4): spells cast by song, Golden Throat as a corrective, the A-Team theme for Standing Ovation (ch. 3), a vocal coach in the saferoom (ch. 36), and a stripping spell called Laundry Day that Carl has her train every day toward a number he will not explain (ch. 4, ch. 55). She sings Entourage on a rollercoaster (ch. 5) and through a weasel fight (ch. 16), hears Wonderwall from a castle vent over the alarm (ch. 26), and by the end sings her mother's lullaby so well it becomes a spell (ch. 74).

Mayor, guildmate, plaintiff

She owns towns now — Point Mongo first, renamed when the mayor goes into the river (ch. 11), then three on her collar (ch. 39) — refuses the title Mayor, names her sergeants and will not leave Mongo. Something she has read on the social board, never named, is a thing she is 'supposed to pretend like I don't know', and Katia, she says, has already left them (ch. 12); she smuggles Valtay agents to Zev and the Borant Emancipation Front, by a channel Carl assumes is the same board (ch. 20). Not invited to CrawlCon (ch. 21), she is instead the reason seven hundred fan chapters exist, and 'as she suggested' they sue the Syndicate (ch. 41, ch. 43). She blackmails a doorkeeper with a ledger (ch. 58) and reads a liaison better than the liaison reads himself (ch. 59).

Ferdinand

The cruelty aimed at her is a cat. The queen's familiar in the howdah is Ferdinand, her long-distance beau from the window, whose memory, she says, they changed to turn him into a jerk, and she takes a lightning bolt for Mongo and then sees who fired it (ch. 51). 'It's not even a discussion' — they are not going down the stairs early — and of the heartache, 'It'll make for a good song' (ch. 52). Instead she charms him: a tiara that doubles her charisma, a narcissist who fawns while insisting he leads (ch. 72), and then, with a potion of her own cat's blood, a minion who calls her his bride and saves Carl by accident (ch. 74, ch. 75).

The mask

She tames a pack leader with one potion and two rules (ch. 49), bleeds Mongo without thumbs (ch. 46), reads a spellbook too soon (ch. 47), casts a Fireball (ch. 27), and asks Carl whether he would do for her what a goat did for his mother (ch. 47). Her pet-show entry has a moonwalk (ch. 70); her talent-show entry has thirty velociraptors in sea costumes (ch. 74), and 'Sic 'em' (ch. 75). In the pit she strips a god with Laundry Day at fifteen, and her cockroach skill saves her from a lightning she would not survive twice (ch. 76). Level 55, top billing, Co-Warlord, number one on the leaderboard — and, in Carl's arms, she asks why it does not hurt as much as it should. He tells her about the mask (ch. 77). In the epilogue she picks a class unread, Viper Queen, and clicks Florida (epilogue).

Squad leader

Donut runs the deck. She reads the T'Ghee tutorial, wears the hats, learns card theory from the chat until she knows more about the game than Carl does (ch. 4, ch. 22, ch. 39), and by the end is stealing cards with The Thief, forcing discards, combining totems and out-playing a cat-show judge (ch. 46, ch. 67). Her totems barely listen — Uzi Jesus lies to her face, Asojano tries a debuff on her, Shi Maria demands to see her hand (ch. 29) — and a twelve-year-old with an eight-second cooldown kills her in the arena (ch. 29). She fights her first real battle alone in a Miami house while Carl watches from a couch (ch. 37), and loses both keys to a hand swap: 'I failed, Carl, and now we're going to die' (ch. 56).

The Havana brown

She distrusts Sister Ines from the breed and is proved right — 'I told you so, Carl' — and she is the one who says, twice, that Mongo should eat the nun (ch. 16, ch. 17, ch. 60). She insults a warlord into a codpiece threat (ch. 21) and names him Captain Enormous (ch. 35), tackles a real Christmas tree (ch. 48), gets drunk for the first time since her skull (ch. 50), is sold by an empress to a waste-management company mid-battle (ch. 29), and receives a gold player-killer skull nobody mentions (ch. 60).

'I can't breathe'

In her room after the sixth deckmaster she says what nobody is saying: that they are losing Katia no matter what happens, that when she thinks of it she cannot breathe (ch. 40). At the trailer she offers to fight the last boss alone, or to skip it, to spare him; she knew from the motorcycle (ch. 43). She recognised every head on the hydra but his stepmother's, and tells him what Bea did with his Facebook, and that Bea knew he had a brother (ch. 47). At the end she rips Shi Maria's card the moment the battle ends, and Paz's at his own request, and tells Carl, 'If you don't go down the stairs, I don't go down the stairs' (ch. 62, ch. 72). Level 63; a celestial box from the garbage people; a hat she kinda likes.

Deathbed Hellcat

She picks a sniper class as the floor opens, accepts a truce before Carl can discuss it, and names the alliance The Good Guys (ch. 1). A crest company sends her the Tiara of a Thousand Lights and she spends the floor filling its jewels with drained hats (ch. 3, ch. 40); the Cloak of the Benevolent Champion, worn as a shawl, raises her constitution from four to 193 by a charisma cheat (ch. 3). She meets Rend and calls him the other woman (ch. 5), marries Louis off to a changeling with 'SAY IT TWICE' (ch. 9), out-negotiates Ferdinand for Shanty Town (ch. 10), and learns from a 1914 box that a spell called War Crime bleeds and cries (ch. 29).

Warlord, and the edge

She runs the castle's defence from the front door with a headset — 'Comrades! […] Tina! Sic 'em!' (ch. 30) — and meets a king on a rhinoceros in a howdah (ch. 33). She tells Carl to throw the ring away (ch. 27), asks him in chat to step back from D'Nadia (ch. 26), and begs him aloud to give the second ring to Li Na (ch. 57). She gives a bored AI relationship advice without knowing whom she is talking to and watches a desk crack (ch. 38). In the Nest, in a ghillie suit with her face pressed to the shield, she goes from level 65 to 74 in hours whispering 'Mommy is killing bad guys' (ch. 73).

Three atrocities

When a goddess freezes eighty thousand people in a pile beside a god fight she turns them into one rolling ball and drives it home (ch. 66); she plays Lil Wayne at Harpocrates over a PA (ch. 67); she rips a corpse field into fleshers (ch. 69); she consents to a tattoo on her flank on condition of a matching one for Carl (ch. 74), and casts War Crime with Bijanbi and Astral Paw, then swings the paw herself, dozens of times, until the screaming stops, while Carl vomits over the parapet (ch. 76). The Oak Fell, Champion of Nekhebit, level 135, deity spells, Muscle Mommy: 'the most powerful crawler in the history of this game', says Mordecai. Nobody remembers the ball. 'It's okay to cry.' 'Not yet' (ch. 77).

The classics

She renames herself EPITOME TAGG'S SEXY MOTHER to keep a warlord too angry to shut Louis's heart down (ch. 84), swallows the Ring of Divine Suffering (ch. 85), and, in Katia's celestial knee pads with Katia's crossbow on a scorpion mount from the Apothecary, stalks Huanxin Jinx in a circle of words of power — 'We don't need to kill the gods and goddesses to win […] We just need to kill you' — and fires Mordecai's mother's ashes between her eyes (ch. 86). She keeps Annie's card (ch. 87). 'They are not going to break me. No matter how hard they try' (ch. 87). Her lawyer at the tenth is Princess Chandra, and the meeting had fireworks (epilogue).