Archive of Our Own

Of all the peculiar sayings people use, one of the most peculiar is "it's not easy being green." Scholars have long debated whether the phrase is about jealousy, the follies of youth, attempts at eco-friendliness, or, quite literally, being the color of leaves. The literary essayist E. Squalor even suggested that the "green" referred to money and the struggles of hyperconsumerism, a word which here means "constantly chasing after the next 'in' thing to the destruction of one's self-worth and relationships". However, the problems arising from having enough money to fill an Olympic swimming pool with cash, or even the other interpretations of the phrase I have seen, in no way compared to the dilemma the Baudelaires faced in the Last Chance General store.

"It's dangerous out there," the shopkeeper had told them. "There's murderers on the loose, according to The Daily Punctilio. And the man they killed visited this shop not too long ago. Yes, Count Olaf — though he looked quite different to all the pictures the newspaper had run before this week; the advantage of a good camera angle, I suppose — came in just the other day to buy gas and some very fresh danishes. He left his taxi parked around back so he wouldn't draw attention; I suppose he wanted to sneak up on those poor orphans. And then someone snuck up on him!"

"We need to leave here soon," Violet said as they stood in front of the telegraph equipment, at a total loss as to what to do next. "As soon as the shopkeeper receives the morning paper, he'll think we're murderers."

"Miranda!" Sunny interjected, indicating she thought the shopkeeper would arrest them because of a newspaper that published information as unreliable as favorable reviews of Al Funcoot's work, accusations that the Baudelaires had murdered Jacques Snicket (who the paper believed was Count Olaf), and my obituary.

"I know," Klaus said. He was still staring at the equipment in his hands, even though he'd already completed the message to Mr. Poe. "But where else can we go? And how? There's nothing here we could—" There, Klaus paused. In his distress, he had turned from the equipment, and something had caught his eye. Two aisles over, pinned on top of a stack of canned tuna, there was an odd flyer.

"Volunteers Wanted," it read. "Researcher, technician, sous chef needed at Old V. F. D." Below this was a street address in a city the Baudelaires knew was relatively close to the one of their birth but had never visited. "Room and board provided. No experience or background check required."

"V. F. D.," Klaus said. "It could be the sinister secret the Quagmires were trying to warn us about."

"Or it could be connected to Jacques Snicket somehow," Violet said. "He called himself a volunteer."

"He did," Klaus said, "and this place cannot be worse than some of the other places we've stayed since our parents died. Your skill with invention would make you a good technician."

"And your knowledge of books would make you a good researcher."

"Alecuis!" Sunny shrieked, which her two siblings understood to mean, "and I would be a good sous chef!"

"The shopkeeper said Jacques Snicket's taxi is parked in the back," Klaus said. "You were pretty good at driving the forklift, back at that miserable lumber mill." Violet bit her lip once and nodded; it wasn't as if Jacques would be coming back to claim it himself. As they left, she tied her hair up, and all three siblings waved goodbye to the shopkeeper. He waved back and offered them extra muffins for the road.

What the eldest Baudelaire did next, my editor would most likely redact for liability reasons, but suffice it to say the Baudelaires were on their way to the Old V. F. D. well before Lou arrived and the shopkeeper began to think of their encounter in a different light.

Violet parked the taxi in front of a massive theater that had seen better days. Several of the windows in its double-height foyer had been boarded up, and one of the roof's swooping eaves was missing entirely, the only sign of its previous presence being a long trail of soot beneath where it should have been. Yet there were also signs that, however long its previous neglect had been, the theater was not abandoned; the grass of its lawn was freshly mowed, and the crumbling marble facade gleamed in the weak sunlight. The gate, made of wrought iron worked into a fanciful pattern that reminded Violet both of music notes and watching eyes, had the words "Vaudeville Family Destination" written in it.

"I guess it has nothing to do with Jacques or Count Olaf after all," Violet said. She was not quite sure if she was disappointed or relieved.

"Now home to The Muppet Show," Klaus read from a brightly colored banner hung above the building's entrance. "I wonder what that is."

"I suppose we're about to find out," Violet said as she knocked on the theater's door, which had recently been repainted a cheerful spring green. After a moment, the door opened, revealing a short, froglike being who brought new meaning to the phrase "it's not easy being green". His skin was just as green as — if not even greener than — the paint on the theater door, which he almost seemed to blend into.

"Hi-ho, Kermit here," the being said. "I run Muppet Theater. Who are you three?"

"I'm V-very pleased to meet you," Violet said. "My name is Daisy." They had decided to use false names in the hopes of allaying some suspicion; after all, if Count Olaf could go completely undetected by affecting a false accent and covering his ankle and eyebrow, perhaps they would be lucky enough that three orphans of the correct ages but different names would not be associated with the Baudelaire murderers. "I wish to apply for the technician post."

"I'm Nick," Klaus said. "And I'd like to be the researcher. And this is Stormy; she'd make an excellent sous chef." 

"Snicket, I suppose?" Kermit asked, pointing behind the Baudelaires. They turned around, confused until they noticed the lettering on the side of the taxi.

"Er, yes," Klaus said. "Our… uncle, Jacques, gave it to us since he wasn't using it any more."

"He retired recently," Violet added, "to a farm upstate, near the Mortmain Mountains." As the words left her mouth, she grimaced, for while the phrase "retired to a farm upstate" can literally refer to one making one last homestead on a farm in the northern region of the territory in which they live, it is also a euphemism, a word here meaning "a phrase so commonly used in place of 'died' that the overwhelming majority of people associate it with such rather than the literal meaning."

"That's very kind of him," Kermit said. "No one else has applied, so I'm very glad you're here. Follow me!" With that, Kermit turned around and retreated further into the theater, and the three Baudelaires hastened to follow him, Sunny in Klaus' arms. 

"Sorry it's a mess; we're still renovating," Kermit said as they walked. The inside of the building was similar to the outside: once grand, long neglected, and currently being repaired. As they turned down a side hallway and headed out of the public-facing areas of the building, the former opulence became less pronounced and the neglect more so. More of the windows were boarded up, and the floorboards creaked dangerously beneath their feet. Large swathes of the ceiling were missing, revealing rust-spotted pipes and bundles of cables, and more cables snaked their way underfoot, coming through doors left ajar or holes punched into the walls. Most seemed to lead to the stage, but some headed nowhere, or traveled in strange loops that almost spelled out words.

"I'll introduce you to everyone at lunch, but I'd bet you'd like to get to your duties right away." Kermit paused in a storeroom behind the stage. "Beau? Are you there?"

"Yeah!" A voice called out, and a large, hairy creature in a plaid shirt appeared a moment later.

"We've got a technician for the theater," Kermit said. "Someone to help you repair things and keep the show running. This is Daisy. Can you show her around?" The creature — Beau, the Baudelaires guessed — stared for a moment before blinking.

"Right!" Beau said. "This way, Daisy." Violet went off with Beau, and Kermit continued on, climbing down a flight of stairs and turning into a hallway that was warm and smelled of good food strongly enough to make Klaus' stomach rumble.

"The Swedish Chef runs the kitchen," Kermit said. " His food really lives up to the smell. Hi, Chef!" Kermit said as they entered.

"Børk?" A man in a chef's hat with a thick red mustache called back. He looked more human than the others Klaus had seen since he had entered the theater, but there was still something ever so slightly… off about the man, and about the chickens that clucked around him. 

"I found you a sous chef, just like you asked. This is Stormy." Sunny looked at the bustling kitchen around her, nodded, and gestured for Klaus to set her down.

"Boyar!" Sunny said.

"Børk!" the chef said again, and the two quickly got to work.

"Fast friends," Kermit said.

"I've never seen Sun — er, Stormy warm up to anyone that quickly," Klaus said as Kermit led him back up the stairs and to a large desk situated next to the staircase, which continued upwards to a landing with three dressing rooms. Cables had been wrapped around the staircase's banister in an attempt to secure them and led into the leftmost room, which had "Miss Piggy" written on a star-shaped plaque that may once have been gold-colored.

"My — our — office," Kermit said. "You'll be sharing it with me and Scooter, who's currently out on errands." Kermit gestured to a chair, and Klaus sat down behind the desk. Its surface was scattered with objects — an old rotary phone with a wire leading doggedly out of it, magazines, calendars for the next and past five years, paperweights, half-filled notebooks, and teacups with a pattern Jacques Snicket would have recognized but Klaus didn't look twice at.

"Your job is to find our next guests," Kermit said, "and other stories for us to cover. Scooter and I have been handling it so far, but it'll be useful to have someone specifically dedicated to it. We all have connections, but figuring out who is available when can be a bit tricky." Indeed, the calendar for this year — opened to the current month — was covered in scrawled messages. "Once you've found a guest, you need to research them more fully: famous roles they've had or low-profile ones they're very fond of, preferred songs — and the sheet music for them; we've got a catalog on the third floor to look through for that — anything special they'd want in the dressing room, that sort of thing. From that, we can start planning segments." There was a loud bang from elsewhere in the building. "I should go see what that was." With that, Kermit went off, leaving Klaus alone. 

Cautiously, Klaus inspected one of the notebooks and noticed its pages were filled with names and availabilities of potential guests. Noting the next empty spot on this year's calendar, he scanned several pages before finding a rolodex and flipping through it for contact information. (Somewhere in there — perhaps under S, or maybe in an overflowing V section — there was a card for a familiar taxi service. I cannot say if Klaus ever found it.)

It was not the sort of task Klaus expected when he'd heard of a researcher role, but he would do his best at it nonetheless.

"We've got a lot of equipment," Beau told Violet after her siblings had left. "Some of it came with the theater, and Beaker collects things, too. But most of it's broken. And even when it all seems to be working perfectly, the building will lose power for no reason. Bunsen will turn on his particle decelerator, or Gonzo will fire up his cannon, and poof! Everything turns off!"

Violet almost asked what a particle decelerator was, or why Gonzo had a cannon, before deciding she did not wish to know. Instead, she looked at the pile of equipment in front of her: televisions and microphones and cameras and miles upon miles of cables, from 5V USB adapters to what looked like uninsulated power lines. She looked at the backstage outlets, and the multi-outlet extension cords plugged into them, and the even-more-multi-outlet extension cords plugged into those.

"I think I can see why that happens," Violet said. "There were cables running through the hallways; what were those for?"

"The TV cameras," Beau said, "to carry the picture out. I tried looking into one, but I couldn't see anything. There's a bunch that run from the stage to the broadcast room and another from Miss Piggy's dressing room to there, so she can do her show for the Video From Divas network."

"We could run extension cords through those holes as well, so the theater isn't drawing all its power from one circuit," Violet suggested. "That would reduce outages. And I could repair some of the equipment using parts from the rest, so we would have spares." There was a heap of wire and plastic shards Violet could only tell had been a camera by its large, miraculously intact lens; another camera looked as if something had taken a bite out of the front of it but had its rear electronics mostly intact. And then there were the microphones, several of which on first inspection looked as if they were only missing methods of connecting to power or a sound system, and there were plenty of cables strewn about that could work… 

Violet tied up her hair. She had work to do.

After Klaus had worked through several pages of the notebook, calling back potential guests who were available on the correct nights and confirming they could attend, Kermit returned to the office (with several points of his collar still lightly smoking), and they headed down to lunch. The theater's canteen was a low-ceilinged, spacious room next to the kitchen that Klaus thought probably served as rehearsal space. Along one long side was a counter staffed by the Swedish Chef, and there were small tables grouped throughout the rest of the room. Most of the chairs were currently occupied by the theater's residents — muppets, Kermit had told him they were called, hence their program being The Muppet Show — but Klaus spied an empty seat next to Violet. After collecting a "Mystery Po-Boy" (which, despite how good it smelt, Klaus was pretty sure he did not want to solve the mystery of), salad that looked like it had been hacked with an axe, and chocolate mousse from the counter, Klaus went to sit with her. After a moment, Sunny (wearing a hairnet) joined them. Her lunch seemed to consist of a variety of raw vegetables and hard candy.

"How was your morning?" Klaus said.

"Rewiring," Violet said. Her hair was still up. "After lunch, we need to move some heavy equipment to do more rewiring. I'm trying to think of an invention to do the lifting."

"I can do it," Beau, the muppet Violet had been helping that morning, offered. "No trouble."

"...Right," Violet said. "How was your morning, Nick?" It was odd, referring to her brother by a different name, and she was sure it was odd for him to hear it as well. She wondered if, in time, replying to their aliases would become as second nature as assembling a circuit board or using their real names.

"Made some calls," Klaus said. "The show has guests through the end of next month. And yours, Stormy?" From the look on his face, her brother found this alias business just as awkward as she did.

"Boyar," Sunny said. Klaus was unsure if that was an attempt to copy the Swedish Chef's speech patterns or Sunny expressing that she'd had an excellent time acting as a chef.

"Attention, please!" Kermit shouted from the front of the room. "We have some new people here today. Stormy is helping the Chef, Daisy will be acting as our new technician, and Nick will be researching guests with me and Scooter." Kermit gestured for them to stand. "Say hi, everybody!"

"Hi, everybody!" someone yelled back. A muppet near the back of the room with orange skin and a green tracksuit snickered, and Kermit grimaced.

"Fozzie needs some new jokes," Beau said.

"That's all the announcements I have today," Kermit said. "Tonight we have a very special guest, Gustav Sebald! How is prep for tonight's show going?" After that, the mood in the canteen shifted from "lunch" to "practice". Various acts demonstrated their skits for the night, and a blue, eagle-like muppet called Sam criticized them, mostly on perceived impropriety.

"We are family-friendly programming!" Sam said after a drum solo by Animal. "This is not The Muppets: Sex and Violence!"

"Not anymore," Fozzie said. He sounded vaguely disappointed.

After a while, Violet collected her dishes and went to return them behind the counter, only for Sam to turn his attention to her.

"Young lady!" Sam barked at Violet. "Have you been good to your mother?"

"Well… erm…" Violet stammered, temporarily at a loss for words.

"At a loss for words" is an English phrase that does not mean, as one might assume, that a person has lost a dictionary or other repository of words, or that they have somehow managed to run up a deficit with regards to the English language. It simply means, out of any of the thousands of words the person can call to mind, none quite encompass the message and feeling they wish to convey. It is quite common for people offering sympathies or condolences to end up at a loss for words, as "I'm sorry that happened" or "my thoughts are with you" feel like mere raindrops into the canyon of grief. This was not why Violet was at a loss for words, nor was she afraid that the muppets would connect three orphans of the same ages as the Baudelaires where they would not connect three children whose parents were not known to be dead. (If their experiences with Count Olaf had taught the Baudelaires anything, it was that the threshold for disguising oneself was so low as to rival the core of the Earth.) Violet was at a loss for words because, when one is in that metaphorical canyon, it is often so deep that one cannot see the surface, and it can feel like acknowledging that your loved one had died, even in a plain statement of fact, would send the canyon's towering walls crumbling down on top of oneself.

"Our parents are dead," Klaus said after a moment.

"My condolences," Sam said, looking vaguely abashed. "I didn't realize this was a sad occasion."

"I'm sorry." Beau clapped a hand on Klaus' and Violet's backs. "How long ago was it?" Klaus opened his mouth before closing it without speaking. He truly could not say how long it had been since that fateful day on Briny Beach; his life since had been dedicated more to terror, eight books' worth of it, than to keeping time.

"A while," Violet said. "Stormy was just a baby then." In truth, it had been less than a year, and Sunny was still a baby, albeit one edging ever closer to toddlerhood. "It just… snuck up on me. I should get back to work. Good luck, everyone."

"You do not wish an actor good luck!" Sam said as they left. "You direct them to break an arm!"

"Leg."

"Close enough!"

"This way," Scooter said as he led Klaus and a half-asleep Sunny to the theater's broadcasting area. It was a small room in the very back of the theater, and its threshold was so covered by the various wires terminating within the room that there was hardly any place to step through the door. "It's going to be nice to have someone to trade off the broadcast desk with. No more worrying about when a guest needs something but the cameras are already rolling! And your sister thinks she's fixed the problem we had with power going out when Gonzo shoots his cannon."

"She mentioned something about that at lunch," Klaus replied.

"These TVs," Scooter gestured to a row of small televisions mounted to the table, "are The Muppet Show's cameras. Currently, we have one for a close up view, one for an audience perspective, and one for Statler and Waldorf; the rest are if we get any more cameras working. The image we're broadcasting is on the bigger screen; you can toggle between the different cameras using these switches, but if we lose power, we'll have to reset all of them. And here," Scooter pointed to a large map on the wall, covered in then-unlit light bulbs, "are all the places we broadcast to! The lights will turn on as stations tune in. Any questions?" Klaus did not reply, even to ask why the occupants of one of the theater's boxes merited a third of the show's cameras; he instead stared at the map, transfixed by a city geographically close but yet so far away. "Nick?"

"Oh? Sorry, it's nothing, I just see my hometown is up there." Klaus wondered if he would ever become accustomed to that name, or if he would spend his life always looking over his shoulder, wondering who the person talking to him was speaking to.

"Really? What's it like?" Scooter asked. "I've never left this city before; first I lived with my parents, and then my uncle J. P. Grosse when our house burned down, and now at the theater."

"It was… simple," Klaus said. "Everything made sense there." Slowly, the lights across the map turned on and began to blink steadily, signaling that it was almost time for the show to start. "I'm going to go back there someday — we all are." They'd rebuild the house, and Klaus would stock the library with every book he had found on their travels, and Violet would have her own space for inventing, and they would take Sunny to Briny Beach and skip stones again, some contraption of Violet's sending them far over the horizon, without the phantom feeling of long-dissipated smoke in their throats—

"You sound like Gonzo," Scooter said. "I can hear them starting the music! And they've lit the lights!" Hurriedly, Scooter began flicking switches and turning dials at the desk, and any thought of home Klaus had was lost between helping Scooter and watching the Muppet Show race into being like a train plummeting towards broken tracks.

One particular rhetorical technique in English is to damn with faint praise. When one damns with faint praise, one says something that initially seems like a compliment but, upon second glance, is not, either because it compliments something tangential to the subject at hand or is so qualified as to be useless. For example, saying that Fozzie's practice for his comedy routine had been better than the Baudelaires had expected would be to damn with faint praise. Similarly, the opening number for that night's episode of The Muppet Show, a rendition of the confrontation song from Zombies in the Snow to celebrate both the night's guest and the film's recent musical adaptation, could truthfully be called both faithful to the source material and well-rehearsed, and neither of those factors made Klaus like it any more than the scene in the movie he had once seen with Uncle Monty.

"Why do we always come here?" Waldorf asked as Miss Piggy (dressed in a dirndl and, for some inexplicable reason, a viking helmet with looped braids connecting to the horns rather than wrapping simply around her ears) began Greta's long solo. She certainly had a solid voice; when she reached her high note, Klaus could hear the building's remaining windows rattle. "The last time we saw something good here was schisms ago!"

"Hope springs eternal," Statler said. "As does disappointment," he added as Fozzie walked onto the stage.

"That's a lotta zombies in the snow," Fozzie said, "but what about some jokes in the show?" Off stage, someone hit two drums and a cymbal. The audience did not laugh.

If Klaus were to damn The Muppet Show as a whole with faint praise, he would say that the operation was well-run. Acts came onto and off the stage with great efficiency, the guest's roles were clearly thought out, and, when Beaker and Bunsen presented the Muppet Labs segment, Klaus could see Violet (he hastily panned the camera over a few more inches, though all that was visible was a ponytail of dark hair) and Beau waiting in the wings with fire extinguishers and first aid kits. Scooter had an ordered list of the skits being presented that night, complete with a list of probable camera angles necessary.

This organization allowed Klaus' mind to wander. As Gonzo's cannon was wheeled out (and a stretcher brought out shortly thereafter), Klaus wondered what the muppet had left behind and what he was running from. As the curtains opened to a kitchen set and the Swedish chef demonstrated how to make "authentic" Kassel jelly donuts (Klaus had the faint idea the chef was thinking of Berlin, though the dish went by many different names in Germany), Klaus tried to remember making breakfast as a family, and found (much to his dismay) those memories had crumbled to ash much like their house had. He scrambled to remember his life before that terrible day, to recall what he'd forgotten, and was only pulled off that train of thought when Scooter nudged his shoulder.

"Show's over for the night," Scooter said. "I really liked the Animal Hospital sketch; it's the best one I've seen in a while!" 

Klaus nodded as if he had paid any attention to that sketch and went to collect Sunny. By now, the lights on the map had gone dark, but he still found himself drawn to one bulb in particular.

"We're going to go back there someday, Stormy," Klaus said. "When all of this is over, we are."

"Rasa," Sunny said, which her older brother took to mean "and everything will be like this awful adventure never happened." 

"Yeah, Sunny, it will be."

Like many of the performers, the Baudelaires had been granted a room in one of the theater's upper stories to sleep in. Materially, it was not much better than what they'd had in their terrible time as Count Olaf's wards, or even Prufrock Prep's odious orphan shack; their bed consisted of blankets and what might once have been a mattress pad, and the walls rattled from the muppets' snoring, but it felt safer than either and any of the places the Baudelaires had been in between. All three, exhausted by the day and their previous journeys, fell asleep quickly. Klaus dreamed the low rumble of Sam's snoring was the engine of Mr. Poe's car, bearing them back to a home still intact and two parents who had shaken ash from their hair. Violet dreamed the high-pitched whirr coming from Beaker's was the sound of a new rock-skipping machine, one that sent stones far over the horizon. Sunny, asleep before they had even made it up the stairs, dreamed of nothing at all.

All too early the next morning, sunlight seeped through the cracks in the boards of their window, and the Baudelaires trekked downstairs for breakfast. It, like dinner the night before, seemed to be a much less strictly scheduled meal than lunch; perhaps half the theater's residents were in the canteen. The Baudelaires helped themselves to rather violently fried donuts (the Swedish Chef appeared to have taken his frustrations out on last night's extra dough) and coffee darker than a black hole before watching the other muppets trickle in and out.

"Beaker seems to have grown that eyebrow back overnight," Klaus said.

"Or he has a fake one at hand," Violet said. "I think he must lose them rather frequently."

"Ick," Sunny said as she tried Klaus' coffee.

"Do you know what you're doing today?"

"The last of the rewiring, hopefully," Violet said. "I've been thinking of rigging a track for the cameras, so we can move them while they're still on; if I have some spare time, I'll try it with one of the broken ones today. You?"

"Answer calls, I guess." Klaus sipped his coffee, made a face, and added a small bowl's worth of sugar to it. Scooter walked in through the canteen's far entrance, carrying a towering stack of packages that he set on the counter.

"Mail time!" he announced, declaring the boxes' contents as he unstacked them. "Some verdantly fresh dill from a farm in the Mortmain Mountains—"

"—I bet that's from your Uncle Jacques," Kermit told Klaus, who awkwardly nodded.

"—Fanmail for Mr. Sebald — I'll be sure to forward them along — a fan package for Fozzie, a get well soon card for Gonzo—"

"—much appreciated," Gonzo said, one wing still in a sling.

"—A gift basket for Miss Piggy, a request for the Swedish Chef to write his own cookbook," the next letter exploded in Scooter's grasp, "and the usual compliments from Statler and Waldorf. Oh, and I got the paper for you, Miss Piggy." At that, the Baudelaires froze.

"The Daily Punctilio?" Klaus asked as he looked around for potential escape routes. Unlike the Last Chance General Store, the Vaudeville Family Destination was in the middle of a city; there would be many potential places to hide, presuming they ran quickly enough…

"I would not use that trash as cat litter!" Miss Piggy shrieked. "It's a horrid paper whose two-bit reviewers attack hard-working actresses just trying to make a living in this world!"

"Many years ago," Gonzo said to the youngsters in a stage whisper, "when Miss Piggy got her first big role, the paper called her performance 'hammier than the pig herself.'"

"It was a nuanced portrayal of cold-hearted determination! And The Weekly Trough appreciated my genius." Miss Piggy huffed. "If anyone needs me, I will be opening this basket in my dressing room."

Shortly after mail was delivered, Scooter asked Klaus if he might handle the morning's errands, seeing as how he and Violet had brought the taxi (and also, unlike Scooter, had already eaten breakfast). Klaus agreed, and was soon handed a lengthy list of deliveries, pick-ups, and general chores to do in the city, from procuring fancy dog food for Miss Piggy's Foo-Foo to acquiring a tire for Gonzo (why Gonzo needed a tire was not explained, only that it should be a car tire rather than one for a bike) to delivering the day's outgoing mail to the nearest postal office. By the time he returned to the theater, it was nearly lunch, and Scooter was on the phone.

"Thank you, sir, and we'll contact you if we need a guest," Scooter said. "Why thank you, I will have a very fine day!" Scooter hung up the phone. "New guest, Kermit!" Scooter waved the piece of paper containing the details of their new potential guest. "Says he's always available, too, so we can just give him a call."

"Hmm," Kermit said, looking at the sheet of paper. "Better not. I think Miss Piggy still holds a grudge." Kermit ripped the page in two and placed the pages in the trash can, and the three of them went back to work. Klaus wouldn't have thought anything of it — Miss Piggy was certainly the type to hold long, deep grudges if that morning had been any indication — had he not glanced in the trashcan and seen, in Scooter's carefully neat handwriting, "Al Funcoot."

He did not get the chance to talk with Violet that afternoon. She and Beau were still busy during lunch, where the muppets rehearsed a science-fiction sketch starring Miss Piggy and two other pigs from the theater's crew, and after lunch Klaus was busy making sure the guest had arrived and everything was in place for that night's show. It wasn't until shortly before the show started, as the hustle backstage increased to a frantic level, that they were able to speak.

"I think Count Olaf may have found us," Klaus said.

"Already?" Violet asked.

"Al Funcoot tried to book a guest spot. Kermit told Scooter not to add him to the list of potential guests — Miss Piggy holds a grudge against him, apparently — but he might try again under an alias Kermit doesn't know to look out for."

"Perhaps he's just looking to raise his play-writing profile." 

"Shur," Sunny said, meaning "in terms of realism, this ranks somewhere behind Klaus' fantasy of returning home last night."

"Or he's checking everywhere that's close enough. It doesn't necessarily mean he knows we're here yet."

"Do you think we should leave?"

"No," Violet said. "You said Kermit wouldn't let him enter the theater, and even if he comes in under another name, Miss Piggy will probably still hold a grudge and attack him. We're safe here. Safe enough, anyways; no one here has tried to arrest us. And we have nowhere else to go."

"Put on makeup, you three!" Sam barked before either of them could say anything else. "Dress up right!" The Baudelaires started guiltily and nodded, even none of them were performing. Violet went to go over last-minute preparations to the show's camera equipment, and Klaus and Sunny headed to the broadcast room, Sunny settling into her spot beside Scooter's desk..

Sunny was half-asleep when she heard the voices. (In truth, Sunny was often half-asleep, as a baby requires much more sleep than an adult or even a teenager-on-the-run-for-murder.) She was exactly where she had begun the night, in the space beside Scooter's desk, but the muppet was no longer there, and neither was her brother; instead, two muppets were standing at the doorway, using the relative seclusion and presumably-sleeping infant to lend their conversation a certain degree of privacy.

"You saw the morning's paper," Miss Piggy said. 

"I did, Miss Piggy."

"Not that I'm sorry that wretched, cruel, spotlight-stealing man is dead, but the car they came in has 'Snicket' written on the side. I shudder to think what happened to their 'Uncle Jacques!'" Miss Piggy sighed. "I don't like this, Kermie."

"I'm not sure I like it, either, but the book of valiant frog deeds my grandfather left me said to always offer safety to those who need it, and I think they really do. You saw them when they first arrived here."

"You have a point. Certainly, I was glad of the aid volunteered to me when I came to the city. And they have been very helpful around the theater."

"They have been. I suppose letting them stay is a deed for a vivaciously fabulous defender as well as a valiant frog."

"I think so, too. Did I tell you our old friend Al called today?"

"Speaking of wretched men…" The conversation continued as Sunny drifted to sleep, her dreams filled with the giant letters V, F, and D chasing away clouds on a sunny day. There was something important about those letters, she knew, even if neither she nor her siblings knew what. She would not remember Kermit and Miss Piggy's conversation the next morning.

A few days later, Scooter hung up the office phone with a grimace.

"What is it?" Klaus asked. It had been a quiet morning; there were no errands that needed to be run, and guests were booked for almost a month into the future.

"Tonight's guest," Scooter said. "They want 'the rainbow song.'"

"The sheet music is on the third floor, right?" Klaus asked. "I can go find it."

"...You haven't been up there yet, have you?" Scooter asked.

"No. Why?"

"You'll see. Get a dolly from Beau and I'll meet you up there."

Perhaps ten minutes later, Klaus had collected a small hand cart from Beau (who was helping Violet with… something that involved the disassembled piece of what Klaus recognized from the paint job as Gonzo's cannon) and arrived on the third floor, where Scooter was waiting in front of a set of double doors.

The room on the other side of the doors was spacious — Klaus thought it the same dimensions as the stage — and filled with row upon row of shelves. Each shelf was filled with a set of black three-ring binders with labels printed on their spines, each about four inches thick and crammed full of yellowing paper.

"Wow," Klaus said. It was not quite the kind he was accustomed to, but he recognized a library when he saw it.

"It's big, isn't it?" Scooter said. "Some of it came with the theater, some of it we've bought, some of it's Dr. Teeth's — all of the Boogie-Woogie section is his, I think — some of it's been donated by guests, and some of it we've even written ourselves. It's organized by topic; the R's are over this way."

"Useful," Klaus said. He thought sheet music was generally organized by composer, but a subject-based scheme would make this particular task much easier, at least. (He wondered, briefly, where "Zombies in the Snow" was now filed — G, for guest song or — if one were indexing by first rather than last name, which would be atypical but much more typical than half the things he had seen recently — Gustav Sebald? F, for film score? B, for the zombies' desire to consume brains?) "Do you have a catalog of it?"

"Not an up-to-date one, I don't think. That would be a good task for a researcher, wouldn't it?"

"I imagine so," Klaus said thoughtfully. Documenting everything in this room would take ages, and get him out of any number of phone calls and quite a bit of desk duty. He continued his search for the relevant binder (or, he suspected, segment of one — how many songs could there be about rainbows?) Quotations, Rabbits, Rabbinical Affairs, Radios, Ragamuffins… Klaus turned the corner to find "Rainbows I." And "Rainbows II". And "Rainbows III" through — Klaus craned his neck to glimpse the bottom of the end of the shelf — "Rainbows DIV" (though someone had drawn two bars on the I, so it looked like an F).

"Why are there so many songs about rainbows?" Klaus asked.

"That's kind of just what rainbows do," Scooter says. "They're visions."

"Of… refraction?"

"I mean, I guess. But also hope, light, good memories, that kind of stuff."

"Yeah, but they're only illusions," a voice said. Klaus jumped, searching for the source of the comment until he saw Gonzo's blue beak peeking out from behind the next row of shelves. "Sorry. I got kerosene on my copy of 'Flight of the Bumblebee', so I needed a new one, and I can never remember where we keep that." 

"A for animal motifs," Scooter said.

"The real reason people like rainbows is that they have nothing to hide. Do you have anything to hide, Nick?"

"Er…" Klaus had, in fact, quite a number of things to hide, starting with his true identity (and attached status as a wanted criminal). Did Gonzo know he was on the run? (Was Gonzo on the run, too, from whatever had made him leave the sky?)

"I hide my desperate desire to be noticed, even negatively and at the expense of my physical safety," Gonzo said, his tone unchanged. "Sometimes I think there's nothing else in the universe like me, and the thought gives me nightmares."

"...okay," Klaus said.

"Sometimes I wish the show was less popular," Scooter said, which, given the show's ratings, was an astonishingly relative statement. "I mean, I'm glad we're not constantly one week ahead of bankruptcy anymore, but more viewers means more pressure. And more crank calls to the office phone; it's been a really bad week for that." The two muppets turned to Klaus expectantly.

"...I'm allergic to peppermints?" he said. It seemed a better confession to make than "I am on the run for a murder I did not commit." "How are we going to get all of this downstairs?"

"We don't need to bring all of it; the song the guest wants is probably in the first twenty volumes, and if it's not we'll head back."

"They're sorted by popularity, not title or composer?"

"The rainbow songs are; it's a lot easier than going through a bunch of music organized alphabetically with no more information than 'it's sad, and it's sweet, and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.'" Gonzo shuddered, and Klaus got the sense this was not a hypothetical example. "The first hundred volumes or so are single copies of the songs with the ones most recently requested at the top; the rest of it is spare copies, alternate arrangements and keys, that sort of thing, sorted alphabetically. There's a freight elevator in the back behind a sliding panel; we'll take that down to the second floor and ask the guest which song they want, then come up for more copies."

Violet nodded to herself as she and Beau began to reassemble Gonzo's cannon. The pieces to it had been laid out in one of the theater's storage spaces for a couple days as they (in between other repair jobs) worked to update it, which hadn't been a problem given that Gonzo had spent most of that time laid up as well. Now, the muppet was back on both feet and wanted his first reappearance on the show to involve his signature act… hopefully with a less damaging conclusion than the last version of it Violet had seen.

"It's more efficient now," Violet said, "which should help avoid shorting out the theater, and the new motor should make your ejection path more reliable. We can angle the cannon so that your trajectory goes under the ceiling, and lay some mats at the back of the theater—"

"I don't need mats!" Gonzo said. "Live fast, die young, that's what my hero always said. Well, what they put on his gravestone."

"There's also a boosted setting for if you want to launch yourself outside the theater," Violet continued. "Don't use it indoors; I think it would send you through the roof."

"You're really good at this engineering stuff, Daisy," Beau said. "Last time I fixed the cannon, it spewed out purple smoke for a week."

"I saw a story in Miss Piggy's paper about a girl who was good at building stuff," Gonzo said. "Velma or Vicky or something. She was from your hometown, too, I think. And she had two siblings!"

"Never heard of her," Violet said hastily. "When you use the cannon, you should be particularly careful to—"

"The story wasn't about her inventing stuff, though," Gonzo interrupted. "I can't remember what it was about, but Miss Piggy was mad that I'd taken it. Maybe it was some kind of youth theater project she'd done set design for?"

"Maybe," Violet said. She wondered briefly why Miss Piggy hadn't wanted Gonzo to see an article about the Baudelaire murderers: could she know who they were and not care? Or was there a reward for their capture that she wanted for herself? (Or maybe she thought they weren't the Baudelaires, but believed Gonzo would think they were? That seemed convoluted, but so did many things in her life, from Olaf's schemes to the Baudelaires' current situation.) In the end, it didn't matter; if Olaf came, or the police did, the Baudelaires would have to leave regardless of how they were found out, and there was little they could do to prepare for either situation in advance.

"Is there an electric blue muppet that likes to hang around in the rafters?" Violet asked as she caught half a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye for the sixth or seventh time while trying to set up a freshly refurbished camera on one of the stage's catwalks.

"Oh, that's just Uncle Deadly," Beau said. "He's the phantom of the theater."

"Did he send a chandelier down on someone?" Violet asked.

"Nothing that derivative," a voice purred behind her, and Violet turned to see that Uncle Deadly had appeared. He was just as bright a blue up close, and his appearance was vaguely reptilian. His hand hovered above the catwalk's railing, as if he wasn't quite sure where it was and had decided holding his hand above it was better than placing his hand halfway through the railing.

"Uh, hello, Mr. Deadly." Violet squeaked.

"You may call me Uncle, young… Daisy. I knew your parents, you know."

"You did?"

"Of course. I knew J. — and K. and L., too — and E., J., M., O., and both B.s. Many volunteers have passed through this theater, and I have been here since it was the New V. F. D., so I have met almost all of them."

"Volunteers? I didn't know this used to be a community theater," Beau said. Uncle Deadly's eyes flashed.

"It wasn't," he said. Before Beau or Violet could say anything else, he was gone.

One muggy day about two weeks into the Baudelaires' tenure at the Old V. F. D., the phone in the office rang. This was somewhat peculiar — very few people called the muppets unless the muppets called them first — but not enough so for Klaus to pay much attention at first. He was in the midst of cataloging the sheet music library and was mostly focused on how he could effectively organize a final inventory so that particular sheets of music could be found — by category would only help if someone knew what category it was already filed under, but he didn't know if composer or title would otherwise be more useful.

"Hello, Muppet Theater, Kermit the Frog speaking," Kermit said. The person on the other end of the line talked for a moment, and Kermit made a face, the corners of his mouth drawing closer together as he frowned. "Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Handler. We sure were looking forward to having you on the show." More talking. "No, no, we can handle it. I hope you have a quick recovery. Goodbye to you too." Kermit hung up the phone and sighed. "Scooter, do we have any alternate guests for tonight?"

"Maybe," Scooter said. "I've been getting calls all week from people wanting to be on the show. I thought they were prank calls at first — the people who made them sound very similar, just sometimes with funny accents — but our crank callers normally don't call back. Besides Al Funcoot, who still wants to come on the program, there's a dancer named Fleet Foote, an actress named Seraphina Pandora Alexandria Marionette, a motivational speaker named Coach Genghis, a singer named Cassandra Ursula Terrific Elliandra, a foreign man named Gunther, and a pair of police officers named Officer Luciana and Detective Dupin."

"I need to get my sisters," Klaus said as he ran from the office. Sunny was easy to track down — she didn't leave the kitchen of the theater very often — but Violet was not in the prop room where he first looked, nor on the catwalks above the stage. Klaus eventually found her in Bunsen's and Beaker's basement laboratory, fiddling with the bottom of a piece of equipment Beau was helpfully holding up for her.

"Olaf's found us," Klaus said, and Violet sat up so fast she banged her head on the underside of the equipment.

"Shit," Violet said. Beaker squeaked. "You're not Sam, and you said worse when Bunsen demonstrated that hyper-fast hair dryer." Violet stood up with more care and left the lab; Beau carefully lowered the piece of equipment and followed.

"Tonight's guest has been injured, and all of the alternates are Olaf or Esme," Klaus explained. "Kermit and Scooter will probably have booked them by the time we get back there."

 "Can we run? The taxi's still parked behind the theater."

"We can't run." Klaus looked out of one of the boarded-up windows and noticed a car parked on the street, directly in front of the theater's service entrance, with a hook-handed man in the driver's seat. He knew without checking that there would be a similar one in front of the foyer. "Could we hide?"

"I don't think so," Violet said. "Even if he doesn't manage to obtain backstage access as tonight's guest, Olaf could just burn the theater down to kill us."

"Then we need to tell them." Klaus frowned and cleaned his glasses. Violet chewed her lip. Sunny chewed a large rock Scooter had seen in a local park and brought back for her.

"What if they don't believe us?" Violet asked. "No one else has, and if they don't, we'll need to leave. If they don't call the cops on us."

"I believe you, Daisy," Beau said. The three Baudelaires jumped, having not noticed him following them out of the lab. "I don't know about what, but you're good kids."

For a second, all three Baudelaires were shocked. Over the months of their tribulations and trials in absentia , they had become accustomed to not being believed, particularly where Count Olaf was concerned. In those circumstances, just one person believing in you could feel world-changing. 

"Thanks, Beau," Violet said.

"Kermit," Klaus said when he returned to the office with his sisters and Beau. "We need to tell you something important."

"What is it, Nick?" Kermit asked.

"Well, first of all, my name isn't Nick," Klaus said. Scooter gasped, but Kermit didn't twitch. "It's Klaus, and my sisters are Sunny and Violet."

"Baudelaire?" Kermit guessed, face still not changing. "The Daily Punctilio isn't the only paper to run that story, even if it runs a version several times more sensationalized than the one in The Weekly Trough, and you were clearly running from something. Given your ages, it wasn't that hard to put together." 

"Yes," Klaus said, wondering exactly how long Kermit had known and why he had done nothing about it. (Though, given some of the muppets, Klaus would not be surprised if they were not the only felons on site. Perhaps the murder they were accused of seemed paltry by comparison.) "And all the calls Scooter took aren't from real playwrights or detectives — they're from Count Olaf and a woman named Esme Squalor, who we think is working with him." If Kermit was surprised at Count Olaf's continued survival, his face did not show it, though Scooter gasped again. "Right after our parents died, Olaf got custody of us… somehow," the particulars of Mr. Poe's reasoning on their placement escaped Klaus, so he could not hope to explain it to Kermit, "but our fortune was in a trust, so he tried to marry Violet to steal it—" Kermit's face began to crumple as if he were a sock puppet whose puppeteer had just made a fist, and Violet hurried to continue the tale.

"He failed," she said. "So we went to live with our Uncle Monty. Then Olaf killed him and tried to frame the Incredibly Deadly Viper, which is neither dangerous nor a viper, for Monty's death."

"Friend," Sunny added.

"So we went to live with our Aunt Josephine," Klaus said, "but Count Olaf impersonated a Captain — he disguises himself frequently — and Josephine fell in love with him. Then he killed her, too, and—" On and on the Baudelaires' tale of woes went, and as they continued Kermit's face folded more and more until Violet thought it would break.

"I see," Kermit said after Violet and Klaus finished explaining how Count Olaf had used the death of a man named Jacques Snicket to fake his death in the Village of Fowl Devotees. "I don't suppose he'd stop at just Mr. Handler?"

"I doubt it," Violet said. "He has done much worse than injure a single man to accomplish some of his schemes."

"And there are other ways into the theater," Klaus added. "The audience, for example." He could imagine Statler and Waldorf, the two hecklers, being joined by the two white-faced women.

"Delivery people," Violet said. While Scooter (and, on occasion, Klaus) fetched small items, most of the theater's supplies, from food to equipment to clothes, came via delivery trucks, and it would be easy enough for one to get hijacked.

"Police," Sunny said.

"And improperly vetted employees," Kermit said, one corner of his mouth tilting up. "Well then, I suppose we'll just have to defeat him ourselves. Scooter, please invite on whichever of our backup guests you would like."

"You really think we could do that?" Klaus asked.

"You are all very fiercely determined and resourceful children. I believe that you three could do anything you set your minds to, given enough preparation. And Count Olaf seems to thrive on silence and secrecy; if we catch him red-handed, he will have neither."

"Wait," Beau said. "What color are his hands now?"

Fleet Foote — or rather, Count Olaf in his latest disguise — was a shockingly handsome (in his own opinion) man, dressed in close-fitting black pants, a shirt opened roughly to his navel (revealing a large swathe of graying chest hair), thick black socks, and patent leather shoes that most of the patent had been scraped off of. He had tied a long scarf around his head that covered his eyebrow, and every so often he would swish his head to toss its tails from side to side in a matter he thought of as artistic. As he entered the Old V. F. D. by its back entrance, part of the scarf got caught in the door, and he required help from Gonzo to get it unstuck. Behind him walked a woman in a fashionably full skirt covered in the feathers of endangered birds; her shoes were brand new, and the knives that made up their heels had been polished to a high gleam.

"Fleet Foote thanks you, you great… whatever," Olaf said.

"Part turkey, part weirdo, part long-nosed purple thing, and part alien," Gonzo said. "You're tonight's guests, right?"

"Fleet Foote is indeed tonight's fabulously handsome guest," Olaf said. The woman coughed. "As is his lovely lady partner…"

"Sabrina Persephone Amaryllis Magnifica," the woman, more properly known as Esme Squalor, said. "The third."

"Fleet Foote and Fleet Foote's partner of the many fancy names would like to thank Mr…. er… the Frog for the opportunity."

"Great!" Gonzo said. "We're just about to start rehearsing the first skit. I wouldn't want your dancing to be outshone by mine too much!" The pair's fake smiles grew tight as they followed Gonzo through the backstage area, Esme's stiletto heels sticking into the wooden floor with every step.

"The frog wouldn't notice one measly missing cast member, would he?" Olaf asked Esme in an undertone.

"At least it's him and not… her." Esme shuddered. "You know the frog keeps worse company."

"I like your shoes; they're very fancy," Gonzo said, completely oblivious to their whispering.

"Thank you," Esme said. "They're very in right now — the latest from one of the best Italian designers." She looked down her nose and Gonzo, as if she did not expect him to recognize the designer's name or even that of the country of Italy.

"Fleet Foote has heard great things about The Muppet Show," Olaf said. "Fleet Foote would like to meet all the people involved in it, particularly, what's their names… the Baudelaire murderers? Violet, Klaus, and Sunny?"

"There's no one with those names on staff," Gonzo said.

"Fleet Foote must be mistaken on their names. Fleet Foote would like to meet all your behind the scenes staff, particularly two know-it-all orphan teenage murderers and the biter who speaks about six words of English."

"Most of the crew comes to rehearsal," Gonzo said, "but sometimes the technical people have to go fix stuff rather than attend. Animal will probably be there, though, once Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem finish practice! You can get his autograph — and mine, of course." Gonzo led the pair downstairs to the canteen area. "I'd really like to go over the opening choreography first, since you two will be performing alongside me and the ever-talented—" Before he could finish, Esme caught sight of the blond pig in a square-dancing outfit waiting for them — or, perhaps more importantly, Miss Piggy caught sight of her.

"You!" Miss Piggy snarled. "Esme Squalor, you vile, facinorous deceiver unfit for a bacon ad!"

"Oh, Pig—" Esme was cut off by a karate chop to the face, at which point she grabbed hold of a handful of Miss Piggy's hair and pulled. From there, the fight started in earnest.

"Fleet Foote sees his partner and yours are… having some disagreements," Olaf said, ducking his head to the side as one of Esme's stiletto heels went flying, embedding itself above the counter. The Swedish Chef exclaimed angrily as the second one followed it.

"I've never seen someone counter Miss Piggy's vigorously formidable defense that effectively," Gonzo said. Items of clothing — Miss Piggy's scarf and gloves and Esme's hair clip — were now flying through the air. Some of the feathers from Esme's skirt had been shaken off and were now slowly floating to the floor.

"Perhaps Fleet Foote could meet this… Animal, you said, now?" It was a peculiar alias for the youngest Baudelaire, Olaf thought, but far from the strangest he'd ever heard, and it did fit her sharp teeth.

"Sure! Dr. Teeth is probably upstairs; we can meet him there."

Soon after Olaf had subterfuged (a word that does not appear in my Veritably Fundamental Dictionary but which here means "used an alias to gain access to an area where, had he been out of disguise, he would quickly have been karate chopped to the head") his way through the back door of the theater, a woman approached its main entrance. She wore a voluminous black coat, buttoned all the way up to her chin and stretching over her pregnant abdomen. In the lapel was a wilting white flower with five narrow petals and very prominent stamen, and in the right-hand pocket was a set of keys, though she had not driven to the theater.

As she reached the gates of the Old V. F. D., the woman paused for a moment. She had been to many places over the years that were called (and, sporadically, were) safe, from a beautiful, spacious house on Lousy Lane to one that teetered on the edge of a cliff above a leech-filled lake to an aquatics facility atop a cavern no one dared to enter. She had been to dairy farms and vineyards and boarding schools. She had been to strongholds on the tops of mountains and sanctuaries in the deepest depths of the ocean. She had even been to what users of a certain acronym had termed the Last Safe Place, the only remaining place of parley between those who liked to set fires and those who hoped to stop them. The Vaudeville Family Destination was not the most extravagant of these places, or the most useful in either location or supplies, or the one the woman had visited the most often, or the safest, but, for her, it had been the First. She had been young then, with her ankle still bandaged and the hands of her brothers still clutched tightly in hers as if they could disappear at any moment, and standing there again, she could almost forget what she had been and become in the time since.

Kit Snicket grasped the taxi keys in her pocket, touched the lemon blossom on her lapel, and continued on. There was a mission to complete.

The box office was where but not how she remembered it; the colors were brighter, almost childish, and the original fixtures were more worn with age. From the open ticket booth, a blue eagle was lecturing two men about proper etiquette.

"Now remember," Sam said, "you must not shout fire in a crowded theater."

"What about an empty one?" Statler asked.

"What about setting one?" Waldorf asked.

"Not even if there's smoke! Shouting fire can cause a panic. It's a taboo even more serious than that of the Swedish play!" This, of course, is not true, even beyond the eagle's misappellation of Macbeth or that "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a quote from a now-superseded legal opinion rather than a piece of etiquette. It is dangerous to falsely shout fire in a crowded theater — or any other crowded space with limited exits — because it can cause panic, and, as a result, a crowd crush (a word here meaning "the gruesome phenomenon that occurs when the front of a group of people encounter an obstacle and the back of a group, not seeing it, continues pressing forwards, and that is the cause of most crowd injuries"), but the presence of an actual fire can still cause injuries from evacuation crushes as well as injuries from the blaze. A notable example of an occasion where fire should have been shouted earlier is that of the 1876 Brooklyn Theatre fire, where, after a fire had accidentally been set on the stage, the theater staff initially pretended that it was part of the performance so as to not incite panic. This delayed the evacuation of the building (which did involve the sort of crush the staff had been hoping to avoid) until several exits were inaccessible and contributed to the deaths of at least 278 people. A less notable example of this would be the conflagration at the Old V. F. D. during a performance of The Necessity of Combating Blazes and Tea Set Theft , where, after a pitched battle between fire-starters and fire-fighters, much of the floor of the theater was set ablaze, and I lost Beatrice in the resulting chaos, though we both lived to burn another day.

Sam continued extolling the virtues of a good theater-goer as he collected tickets. A hook-handed man rifled with some difficulty through his coat pockets to come up with one impaled on his hook. "I suppose that will do for punching. Young lady! Have you been good to your father?" Sam asked Kit. She gritted her teeth.

"The question is," she said, glancing at the now-occupied Box #5, "has he been good to me?"

Scowling and clutching a bandage to his arm, Olaf walked along the series of dressing rooms in the theater. The Animal Gonzo had spoken of had not been Sunny after all — perhaps Animal's participation in a band should have been a clue to that — but the Baudelaires had to be around here somewhere. He had already checked the most obvious places — the hidey-hole on the third floor, the eaves of the roof, the backstage areas not totally marked off — so now it was time to check the less intuitive places to hide. (Perhaps he should have checked here first; the Baudelaires had never taken Concealment 101, after all, and the less intuitive areas were far more accessible.)

The first dressing room was marked "Miss Piggy" and he steered well clear of that after Esme's fight with her earlier. The second was nominally his, though he had not used it at all, too dedicated to the search. Someone had sent up a plate of mostly-blackened donuts as a snack, which he also steered well clear of. The third opened silently, and appeared to serve many of the muppets; rather than one table, a long counter ran down one side with a mirror above it. The other side of the room was dedicated to a half-full costume rack the perfect size for annoying orphans to hide behind. Olaf approached it slowly, stepping on the room's creaky flooring without a care; there was nowhere for anyone to go, after all, and little else for him to do.

"Hello, Olaf," a voice said behind him. Olaf turned to see a blue, almost reptilian muppet standing in the dressing room doorway.

"Uncle!" Count Olaf said. "I haven't thought of you in years!"

"People rarely do," Uncle Deadly said. "And much you or anyone else would have to think would be ill, which is even rarer. Why are you here, Olaf?"

"I'm chasing three orphan brats. The oldest, Violet, keeps inventing her way out of my schemes; the middle one, Klaus, always has his nose in a," Olaf paused and spat, "book, and the youngest, Sunny's, main mode of communication is biting." Olaf grimaced and gestured to his arm. "Apparently she's found her kind here."

"Ah, you've encountered the drummer. I cannot think of anyone with those names — or matching those descriptions — here."

"Oh, they're in the theater; I'm sure of it. I just need to find them." Olaf grinned. "Or otherwise make them no longer my problem. Want to set a match to this place like old times, Uncle? Probably less grand than the last time, but it's been years since you've had any fun at all."

"Hmm." Uncle Deadly's expression was unreadable. "Perhaps tonight will be the one that lays my soul to rest." Before Olaf could say anything else, Uncle Deadly disappeared, and after ascertaining there was no one behind the clothes rack after all, Olaf continued on his prowl. It was time to look through the storage spaces more closely; one of them was filled with electrical equipment he was sure would have caught Violet's attention.

After finding her seat between a hook-handed man and a bald man with a long nose, the pregnant woman pulled out a large tome detailing, among other things, a sewer system, the tale of a thief and his adopted daughter, and a failed revolution.

"What use is a book in a place like this?" The hook-handed man asked the pregnant woman.

"For a start," she said, "it's heavy." As the curtain rose, she slammed the book's spine into the hook-handed man's head, then pivoted quickly to do the same to the bald man.

"You have brought trouble to the theater, Kermit," Uncle Deadly said.

"How so?" Kermit asked as he looked over the half-assembled cast for the night's show. Piggy had a number of scratches down one cheek, which she was attempting to cover with a carefully placed headpiece. There was a proud look in her eye every time she glanced at her gloves (a different pair than she had been weairing that morning) and an angry one when anyone looked at her face.

"Tonight's guest."

"Oh. I know about that," Kermit said.

"He is after the children."

"I know about that, and so do they."

"Olaf — or whatever he has called himself today — is the kind of trouble that has matches following after it. And sand buckets."

"We're well-equipped for fires," Kermit said. "And I doubt we will be the ones getting burned tonight."

Olaf stumbled through the storage areas immediately behind the stage. He had neglected them in his initial assessment of good hidey-holes in the building due to their proximity to public areas, but perhaps they were more viable hidey-holes than he thought; they were very dimly lit and filled with objects large enough to hide behind. Catching a flash of hair ribbon out of the corner of his eye, Olaf continued forward, knocking props aside in his haste to follow Violet. He noticed the props become more sparse and less dusty as he chased her, but he paid them no mind; the actual stage would surely be brightly lit this close to the show, and a public confrontation would not help the Baudelaires when he had been declared dead and they had been declared his murderers.

He finally caught up to Violet (and the other two — truly, today was his lucky day) at the very front of the theater's storage, so close he could see what he assumed were the stage's rear curtains right in front of them.

"I've been looking all over for you three brats," Olaf snarled, and the Baudelaires took a step back. Olaf let them keep their distance — for now — and stayed on a small mark taped onto the stage.

"What are you going to do?" Violet asked. "Make me marry you again? If you wanted to do that, you should have come as Al Funcoot and have us reenact the wedding scene from The Marvelous Marriage." She knew Miss Piggy had once tried a scheme similar to Olaf's, with the intent of marrying Kermit, but that did not mean the muppets would be less credulous of a similar gambit.

"Oh no," Olaf said. "You are all still wanted criminals, and it's rather more difficult to steal the fortune of a wanted fugitive by marrying her. Her younger sister, on the other hand, not even old enough to talk when the crime was committed… I think this theater is about to experience a tragic accident, leading to the deaths of its researcher, a technician, and anyone else who gets in my way. A fire, perhaps, like the one that killed your wretched parents, or an electrocution, or a tragic end to a knife-throwing act."

"You're a dancer, not a knife-thrower," Klaus said. "And it's show policy that we don't use any projectiles other than Gonzo."

"You always seem to forget about this." Olaf produced a long, thin knife out of one sleeve, holding its tip on Sunny's chin. He could hear rumblings from the audience; he needed to end this quickly and make it to his place on stage before he was missed. "I wonder why anyone ever called you smart. The last of the Baudelaire orphans will be lost in the chaos, only to resurface to claim her fortune years later. Any last words?"

"Now!" Sunny yelled, and suddenly all the lights were illuminated and the curtains were pulled back. Directly in front of Olaf, perhaps ten feet away, Scooter held up a camera, its red light still blinking, and gave the Baudelaires a thumbs up. The signal was being sent across the country, from high-rise apartments on Dark Avenue to cabins on Lake Lachrymose to a hidden basement at the Denouement Hotel. It was on the countertop TV at the Last Chance General Store, where the shopkeeper was regaling his close encounter with the Baudelaire murderers to Lou, and the waiting room television at Heimlich Hospital and even an old six-inch CRT in a self-sustaining hot air mobile home. The Muppet Show did not have the largest audience — or even a particularly large one — but for this purpose, as tens of dozens of people sat in frozen shock in the theater or in front of their televisions, it was enough.

"It's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights," muppets sang as they entered the stage behind the Baudelaires and Olaf. Several of them were half a step behind their normal choreography, as shocked by Olaf as he was by them, but muscle memory carried them through. "It's time to get some justice on The Muppet Show tonight!" As the opening theme continued, Olaf did not react, not even to hide the knife behind his back. He simply stared at the red blinking light, processing its implications as gasps of shock and recognition began to trickle in from the audience. He recovered just in time to notice the cannon being wheeled out from backstage.

"Fleet Foote is confused by the accusations against him," Olaf said, "and Fleet Foote believes the Baudelaire murderers," here Olaf swung his knife around, looking for the Baudelaires, but they had exited the stage almost as soon as the curtains had moved to reduce the risk of being recognized and arrested, "are being too hasty to judge him. Fleet Foote has never met the now deceased and infamously handsome Count—" Olaf was cut off by Miss Piggy (Violet wondered if she had been told of tonight's situation — most of the muppets hadn't, but she did apparently hold a grudge against at least one of Olaf's aliases) snatching one end of his scarf and ripping it from his head, revealing Olaf's unibrow. Beau then grabbed Olaf about the middle, carrying him under one arm as easily as one might carry a puppy, and loaded him into the cannon head-first. Olaf's shoes and socks were removed, revealing the tattoo on his left ankle, which Scooter helpfully zoomed in on before nodding to the Baudelaires backstage.

"For Uncle Monty," Violet said, "and Aunt Josephine."

"For Jacques Snicket," Klaus said.

"For us," Sunny said, and together they pushed the button to activate the cannon.

Count Olaf was considerably heavier than Gonzo, and somewhat less aerodynamic, but recent improvements in the cannon nonetheless allowed for quite a dramatic flight.

"I always love to see an act go out with a bang!" Waldorf said as Count Olaf crashed through the theater's ceiling with no signs of slowing down.

"As long as they go out, I don't care how they leave!" Statler said, and they both laughed.

After the chaos of the opening the show proceeded much as it always did. The skit where Olaf and Esme would have danced featured Gonzo and Miss Piggy showing off their footwork alone, half of the front stage conspicuously empty; other skits where the villainous count would have appeared had been replaced with Muppet staples kept ready in case of illness or injury, like Sam lecturing on the themes of Anna Karenina or an encore of Fozzie's stand-up (to redoubled groans from Statler and Waldorf). The audience's reaction was subdued, but not terribly so, and Violet wondered if they had forgotten about Count Olaf as soon as he had exited the theater.

After the show, in the bustle of autograph-seekers and authorities inquiring about what, exactly, had happened earlier that evening, Kit Snicket slipped backstage. She did not see a girl with her hair tied back or a boy with finely polished spectacles or an infant with four extremely sharp teeth, but she did not expect to; she was only a few doors and lackluster security away from public areas. She headed up the stairs to the dressing rooms, one of which held an irate (a word here meaning "angrily protesting not her innocence but her immunity from consequences as a result of her wealth") Esme Squalor demanding to be released, and up still more stairs, until she arrived on the building's third floor.

In her time here, decades and owners and schisms ago, the room she entered had been a music room, ringed with risers and filled with music, and behind its rear wall had been a space to store instruments (and a path to the freight elevator which brought the larger ones up); now, the room was filled with shelves, and when she opened the concealed door by memory more than touch, behind its rear wall were three orphans.

"Hello," she said. "My name is Kit Snicket."

"Ah," Violet said. "We're sorry for your loss."

"Thank you. I am saddened, but not shocked. So many good people have been slain by our enemies. I came to collect my brother's Vehicle for Fast Driving."

"It's parked in the back lot, near the south exit. We don't have the keys." Violet closely examined the floor beneath her feet, lit in pulses of red and blue from the lights flashing through the music room's windows. "They're probably back in the Village of Fowl Devotees. Or… wherever Jacques' belongings ended up." 

"I have my own set," Kit said. "You are very resourceful children, but I fear that once I leave, you will have reached the end of your resources." 

"They're not just looking for Esme," Klaus said. "They're also looking for us."

"Precisely. You are still fugitives, Baudelaires, and this place is your last known location. You are not safe here."

"We are not safe anywhere," Violet said.

"I know," Kit said. Outside, the lights died down, and a few minutes later, Kit heard the rumble of the elevator.

"It's safe to come out now," Scooter said as the door opened. "The police just — oh." Scooter noticed Kit's presence and froze.

"I'm not with the police," Kit said. "Just reclaiming the vehicle my brother so kindly volunteered. I hope you have been as good to your uncle as he has been good to you, Scooter."

"Uh, I try?" Scooter turned back to the Baudelaires. "The police just left; we're not sure if they'll be back. They arrested our other guest — nearly arrested Miss Piggy, too, until they realized who Miss Squalor was — and confiscated Gonzo's cannon for evidence. I don't think they've found Olaf."

"It might take them a few tries to find all of him," Violet said. Klaus winced, as did Scooter once he caught the implication.

"Boom," Sunny said, meaning "Gonzo loved that cannon".

"We can build him another one," Violet said. "One that's more efficient, and doesn't send him into one of the rafters every time he launches himself."

"You plan on staying, then?" Kit said as she climbed into the elevator, the Baudelaires following her without a second thought.

"This is the safest place we've been," Klaus said.

"If you're certain," Kit said. "When you are ready to leave — or when you cannot stay — find me at the Last Safe Place." The elevator opened on the ground floor, next to the parking lot. Perhaps ten feet away, mostly concealed by the building around it, was a bright yellow taxi.

"I don't know where that is," Klaus said. "We've never been there." Kit extracted something from the taxi's glovebox and pressed it into his hands. He looked down to see a hardcover book, so well-used the cover had flaked off along the edges to reveal the cardboard underneath, titled A List of Verified Fascinating Destinations.  

"You'll know the way."