Motif · Book 8, A Parade of Horribles

The Pineapple Cabaret

One of four fates the AI, wearing the fourth-floor bartender Growler Gary, offers Princess Formidable in Orren's office — 'Death. Scolopendra Club. The Cabaret backstage. Or Earth’s surface' — and glosses only as 'The Pineapple Cabaret? First off, it’s backstage at the cabaret. Not the cabaret itself. Not a bad choice.' She chooses the surface.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 23 — Plenty of Plenty; Zev reads the script; a note from C&W&U
• Chapter 24 — Akuma's note; half a prayer, half a song; the sock
• Chapter 35 — Eris and the five-sided coin
• Chapter 36 — Jacobus, the reverse tooth fairy
• Chapter 38 — Akuma's account: Herot, Menerva and the Pineapple Cabaret
• Chapter 39 — The Lollipop: a needle over the singer
• Chapter 40 — Heat four: survival containment; Team Flamengo
• Chapter 55 — The cleaner bot plan
• Chapter 61 — Suckira; the cactus; Li Na leaves the game
• Chapter 67 — Half a prayer, half a song; one flower
• Chapter 69 — The stables: who may leave; the Scavenger myth
• Chapter 71 — Hungry Eyes: the goodbye; Bautista's tea
• Chapter 73 — The Garden of Deliverance; the ducts
• Chapter 75 — Archie's boy; Imani's family; the Feast Hive
• Chapter 78 — Damien's announcement; under a thousand
• Chapter 79 — 715 deals; Britney in Carl's mind; the Nothing in quotes
• Chapter 83 — The poleaxes; Britney kills Osvaldo; the Cadillac
• Chapter 86 — Mimics; the Big Six
• Chapter 88 — Interlude: Quasar; the eleventh floor — twenty-three crawlers; Chaco's parade
• Chapter 94 — Dungeon Boss; the pig in the harness
• Epilogue — Epilogue: Sydnee Iglacia, Prime Minister Victory, Louis Santiago 2

Progression

The name arrives on a war mage's invoice (ch. 23), and Carl remembers hearing it once before, as a banishment offered to Princess Formidable (ch. 24). Eris says Akuma's way in is real and 'so much more' than an exit (ch. 35). Akuma's account: a pocket dimension behind the seventeenth floor built by two former crawlers as an oasis for awakened NPCs, now infested, closed to anyone who worships a god, and reached through the Desperado's casinos or Herot's shop interface (ch. 38). The party builds the cleaner-bot exit and does its arithmetic (ch. 55, ch. 61); a single flower on a cactus says Li Na made it (ch. 67); 227 more follow (ch. 73); the volunteers are limited to the godless and the still-human (ch. 69). The AI: 'Beware exits that seem too good to be true' (ch. 67); Damien of the Syndicate disavows it (ch. 78); the shadow mimics wanted crawlers for its back door (ch. 86). Eris's last word on it: 'Every exit is an entrance' (ch. 97, ch. 98).