Chapter Text
Oh god, I can’t breathe.
No other thought filled Weepy’s head more as he mindlessly clawed his way through the soil around him, trying to figure out which way was up. He felt the night breeze on his hand and burst upward, dirt in his mouth and up his nose. He coughed profusely, and rather suddenly fell forward onto the ground. The bottom of his body felt numb, maybe from the fight earlier that day, and normally he would be completely facedown after falling over, per his anatomy. But instead his eyes were at ground level, looking straight ahead towards the distant fence. Strange. The numbness was starting to fade, and Weepy was so groggy that he would have fallen right back to sleep if he didn’t hear Psycarrot shouting out into the night:
“WHAT DID THOSE BRATS DO?!”
At that point Weepy started trembling as the numbness went away enough for him to discern what had caused it, which after some thought made an inkling of sense. After all, he wouldn’t remember after so much time what it felt like to have legs.
———
“And that should be the last one!” Mugman chirped, cheerfully tossing the final contract into the flames. “Cuphead, we did it! We saved everyone!”
“Yeah, it sure must be crazy for them, huh? I don’t even remember what any of those guys were like before their contracts. They could’ve been in debt since we were born!” Cuphead exclaimed.
“Wow! We should tell ‘em the news! They might not even have noticed,” Mugman pointed out. “Plus, they’ll be so happy we helped ‘em out!” Cuphead added. “We’ll be heroes!”
“I dunno… we did beat ‘em all up first. I wouldn’t be too happy about that,” Mugman murmured. Cuphead paused, then shrugged it off. “I think they’ll be able to forgive us. We did save their souls, y’know.”
“I guess you’re right,” Mugman capitulated, still feeling unsure. But there wasn’t any point in arguing with his brother. They’d know who was right soon enough, anyway. Cuphead’s excitement was infectious, however, and Mugman was bounding right alongside his brother out of the casino, into the city, through the carnival and back to the first isle.
“Gee, sure is quiet,” muttered Mugman. This Isle was always peaceful, but it was pretty dead silent by the time the brothers arrived. Neither friend nor foe showed their face, and the forest was devoid of the usual chatter. “Huh,” said Cuphead. “Guess we should just head on back to Elder Kettle then. He’ll be happy to see us for sure!” Mugman nodded hesitantly and they set off. Mugman glanced through the trees, searching without direction for any bitter familiar faces. Goopy le Grande, maybe Cagney, but neither could be seen watching from the brush or coming the brothers’ way. The quiet and the emptiness of the surrounding landscape was becoming increasingly unhinging.
“Hey, wait!” Both the brothers jumped involuntarily as a high, wavering tenor broke out from the thick wall of silence. They turned to see a short, pudgy man rushing over to them. His cheeks were flushed, and his honey-colored suit was oddly sullied with dirt and grass. He wobbled as he ran, as if both his legs were asleep.
“You… you,” he panted. “You burned all the contracts, didn’t you?” Cuphead and Mugman exchanges confuses glances. “Er, Yeah, we did. Who’s asking?” Cuphead questioned.
“Ohhh, ahem, I was, afraid you’d ask, though really it was unavoidable… stupid… w-we fought, earlier. Though I don’t expect you’d recognize me…” he trailed off, absentmindedly trying in vain to clean off his suit.
“What? I can’t say I remember anyone like you…” Cuphead admitted. “Could you remind me, mister?”
The man shakily hitched his thumb over his shoulder, towards the garden. “I live… there… with my, ah, friends…” his voice broke at the last word, and he looked poised to break down. Mugman scratched his head. “Well, that can’t be right. That’s where we fought the Root Pack. There weren’t any…” he trailed off. The voice, the mannerisms, the flushed cheeks… they were unmistakable. “Are… are you that onion?!” he exclaimed, barely believing his own words. Cuphead gave him a patronizing glance. “No, he’s not that onion, Mugs. You really need to get your eyes…” he trailed off as well, mirroring his brother, “checked…”
The man cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Y-Yeah, I’m… I was that onion you guys fought. A-and my friends, they’re the rest of the Root Pack, but they’re also like me now. This is how we… used to be.” Cuphead and Mugman stared. “This is ridiculous,” Cuphead finally sighed.
“N-no, I can… come over to the garden, please. I can’t explain how this is, but my friends can. It’s… everyone in the isle is like this now.” The brothers tensed at that. Was that why everything was so quiet? “Okay,” Mugman finally said slowly. “What?!” Cuphead cried. “This all doesn’t seem like a good thing, Cuphead. If there’s something we did without knowing, the least we should do is know what we did.”
The man smiled in relief, the same smile the onion had when he first emerged during their battle. It was eerie, how different and similar the two were at the same time. “Thank you, so much… follow me, please.” The brothers obliged, Cuphead more reluctantly. He hoped Elder Kettle wasn’t too worried about them. He hadn’t heard from them since they left the first isle, and before their adventure he was the type to worry if they got back from the carnival even five minutes later than expected. Cuphead couldn’t even imagine how the old man would feel if those five minutes turned into five hours. But Mugman was right. If the silent isle could be attributed to some quirk in the debtors’ deals that they didn’t know about, they couldn’t rest easy just yet.
“Just warning you, the guys… aren’t happy right now. In fact, I’m about the only one in the isle that doesn’t mind being back like this…” At that, the gate to the garden was pushed open with a creak to reveal the underwhelming sight of two other men bickering at each other. One was taller than the other, which he was certainly taking advantage of in whatever argument they were having, and the shorter one looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Both were also sporting dirt-choked clothing, and the taller one’s orange hair looked fit to defy gravity while the other’s matted brown curls seemed set on pushing through to the Earth’s core.
“Look, it wasn’t my fault someone thought we didn’t need a house anymore!” the shorter one snapped.
“Well, you did the deed! I just threw out a bit of foresight!” the other retorted.
“Oh, yeah, some foresight that was! The same foresight that got us into this mess in the first place!”
“And you didn’t have to go to the casino, either! But I suppose we’re all equally guilty of that…”
“No, no, you pulled the trigger! Me and the leaky faucet had no choice but to go along with your stinkin’–“
“Ahem, fellas, I ah, brought guests…” The two looked over towards their company. The tall man’s eyes narrowed and he marched over, his intimidation offset by the same wobbly gait that the pudgy man had before. He stopped in front of the brothers and bent down to meet their eyes, as he was easily twice as tall as they were. “I hope you know how lucky you are,” he scoffed. “If it were any other way, I’d smash you to pieces right now.” His glare told them he wasn’t joking. It was almost hypnotic, as it had been when they’d fought, and the brothers found themselves searching for floating carrots in their peripheral vision. “Ahem,” the first man broke in. “They actually don’t know, really. I mean, yes, they know how, how… they don’t know about the catch,” he finally forced out, fastidiously wiping his brow with a handkerchief from his vest pocket. The tall man cast a glance askew at his compatriot. “Go on.”
“Ahuh, before we start, I guess you should know our names. Or at least, um, the ones we gave ourselves after the contract. It’s been so long, we don’t remember who we used to be,” he admitted forlornly. Cuphead and Mugman stood agape. How long was so long, to the point that they forgot their names? “I’m Weepy,” the pudgy man said, putting a clammy hand to his own chest. “Pretty… easy… to remember, heh… he’s Psycarrot,” he continued, pointing to the tall man, who glared again in response, “and that over there is Moe,” Weepy finished, turning to the brown-haired man, who was starting on his way over. “Don’t think you’re off the hook with me, you little finks,” he grumbled. “I’m just as mad as carrot-top over here.” The brothers didn’t know what to say to that, but they were nevertheless intimidated by that sentiment. Then, without warning, Psycarrot and Moe plopped into sitting positions, Weepy following suit. Cuphead and Mugman stared, then shrugged and sat down too.
“What?” Moe barked defensively. “You go without legs for ten-odd years and try to stand for an hour without falling over!” The brothers stayed silent. Aside from Weepy, their former foes seemed very on edge. Hopefully they would find out why.
“Right,” muttered Psycarrot, absentmindedly digging his fingers into the soil. “You know about the contracts. You beat everyone senseless for ‘em. But what you didn’t know, and I wager the Devil didn’t care to mention it, is that there’s a catch to every one of his contracts. We all wanted something. I can’t speak for everyone, but we for instance wanted two things: bigger crops, and some way to keep trespassers out. Folks broke in our garden all the time, see. Any good crops we had got stolen, and the soil was getting worse by the day. So we moseyed on over to the Devil’s Casino –“
“You moseyed on over to the Devil’s Casino,” Moe butted in. “We were just along for the ride.” Psycarrot shot him a look and continued. “Nonetheless, we got that sleazy dice man’s attention, and soon the boss himself appeared to talk business. I gave him our plight, and he said he could help. But his idea of ‘help’ was different than what we’d envisioned.”
“An understatement…” Moe grumbled under his breath.
“He reasoned we could benefit from some powers of our own, like the kind he used. Dark magic. And his answer to the whole crops thing was in the catch. The catch is this.” Psycarrot leaned in, as if telling a secret. “Anytime anyone makes a contract in that casino, the Devil changes their form. He always comes up with some stupid reason, but I think it’s only for his amusement. His excuse for us was that if we wanted to know how to grow our vegetables right, we’d benefit from…” here he rolled his eyes, “…being vegetables ourselves.” Weepy shuddered, and Moe scoffed and picked up where Psycarrot left off.
“It sounds like a bunch of hooey, sure, but it worked. We were so big an’ powerful that no one dared come close to our garden, and even the form change gave us new perspectives. We started growing things right, and honestly it was kinda easy to get comfortable. I forgot how stupid and weak I am like this,” he argued, gesturing up and down himself. “Speak for yourself,” Weepy countered. “It was absolutely dreadful for me. It felt so wrong to not need to eat anything, and… and to just be made of thin layers of leaves…” He quivered, and his companions rolled their eyes. “Anyway, all the contracts work like that. And for the most part, everyone was happy with what they got. We got used to our new lives, yada yada yada. But now things are back to the way they used to be,” Moe pointed out accusingly. “We haven’t been like this in so long, and it ain’t fun to get used to. Why d’ya think we’ve all been digging around in the dirt like weirdos this whole time? And I’m hungry. I haven’t been hungry in years. It hurts to be hungry. And nothing in our garden looks appetizing anymore, for obvious reasons I hope…”
“We’re grateful that you freed our souls, we really are,” Weepy reassured them. “But everyone’s in a tizzy right now because by burning the contracts, you boys voided everything in them. Think about it. Anyone you fought who wasn’t already human… think about what they’re going through right now.” The brothers considered everyone they’d gone up against, and their faces scrunched up as they found some particularly disconcerting cases. At the end of it all they had more questions than answers.
“B-but…” Mugman stammered. “If you guys got used to being vegetables an’ all that other stuff, why can’t you just get used to being back the way you were? I’d think you’d even get used to it faster, right?”
“That’s not the point,” Psycarrot answered. “Everyone, except for Weepy I suppose, turned out liking themselves better after the fact. We were strong, and had a place, and now we’re just a pack of bitter farmers who don’t even want to farm. You see the problem?”
Cuphead and Mugman considered everything they’d heard. They understood what Psycarrot was saying, even if it didn’t make all that much sense. Mugman thought they should at least talk to everyone they’d fought. Apologize for unwittingly rendering them even more unhappy than they’d been before, but then help them ease back into their lives. It was the best they could probably do, since their contracts were gone forever. But he got the feeling Psycarrot wouldn’t take that answer. So he instead formed a false plan of action.
“There are still debtors we fought that were human, right?” he asked. Psycarrot raised an eyebrow. “Yes.”
“Well, how’d they work that out with the Devil? Are they double-debtors or something?”
“I don’t know. What does it matter?”
“Maybe we could talk to them. They might know more about the catch, enough to manipulate it themselves. Like, uh, what about Hilda? She could turn into all kinds of things! Maybe she knows how to control it!” Psycarrot’s brows knitted together in thought. He seemed to have less cognitive power than he did under his contract, and it was clearly bothering him. “I suppose… that isn’t too far-fetched…” he muttered. “You’d need a companion. If you really are thinking of going to Hilda, I don’t imagine she’ll be very pleased to see you.”
Mugman looked at the thin man expectantly. He clearly wanted to go with them, though perhaps not as much for the brothers’ protection as for his own potential benefit. “I can go with you,” Psycarrot finally said casually, pretending not to care either way. “I-I can go too!” Weepy squeaked awkwardly. “I… I just want to get out of this garden…” he murmured, avoiding eye contact with his friends. Moe groaned. “I ain’t going anywhere. You airheads can go on a fancy adventure all you want, but someone’s got to watch the crops.”
Weepy cocked an eyebrow. “Moe, we don’t really–“
“Good idea,” Psycarrot interrupted, shooting his sensitive friend a meaningful glance. “We shouldn’t be out for long. We’ll likely get tired from walking by sunset anyway.”
Mugman smiled. “Great! Let’s go–“
“Wait,” butted in Cuphead. All eyes turned to him. “Don’t get me wrong, I really want to help everyone out, but can we at least stop by home and let Elder Kettle know we’re alive? I’m sure he’s worried sick about us…” Mugman put a hand to his mouth. “Oh gosh, you’re right! I forgot about that. Maybe he can wash your clothes, too!” he added, addressing their new companions. The two scanned their mud-stained clothing with underlying disapproval. “That would be desirable…” Weepy muttered.
“All right,” proclaimed Psycarrot. “We’ll stop by the old coot’s place. But it’s straight to Hilda after that.”
“You got it!” Mugman confirmed. Him, his brother, and the Root Pack all stood up. “Be seein’ you,” Moe muttered half-heartedly, plodding off to some corner of the garden to do whatever work he was planning on keeping himself busy with. The remaining four set off through the gate, Psycarrot closing it behind them. He was carrying a pair of tall black rubber boots, which seemed to be his footwear of choice, but seemed hesitant to put them on even after leaving the garden, digging his bare toes into the grass as if probing it for information. The brothers wondered how strange clothing in general had to feel for them. Weepy didn’t seem too uncomfortable, however, fully appreciating the green landscape around them. He must have been so bent on getting their attention earlier that he didn’t even think about what he hadn’t seen in years. There was that word again, “years.” Cuphead was uncomfortable thinking about how long, possibly, the debtors had been used to the forms the Devil has given them. And he and his brother had flung them back to square one with one flick of the wrist to the flames.
He wasn’t sure what Mugman thought he could do to make the situation any better, but at the same time he didn’t want to leave his brother to talk to these potentially dangerous people alone. The Root Pack would probably be the most forgiving of their foes, and though Mugman’s blind kindness knew no bounds, that wouldn’t make the former debtors go any easier on him.
As they began walking towards the brothers’ childhood home, Cuphead felt a familiar twinge in his gut. It had been present throughout their journey to save their own souls, and it had finally laid off once they’d burned the contracts. But now it was back, and stronger than ever, and Cuphead was strangely unsettled by it. Because once the twinge came back, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to stay at Elder Kettle’s house once they got there, sleep the pit in his stomach away, and forget everything that had happened in between burning the contracts and lying down to sleep.
And the only thing scarier than that was that Cuphead didn’t trust himself not to give in to that selfishness, and leave his brother at the mercy of agitated psychotics.