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).