Pearls on a String

Volume 2

Chapter 18: Infection

Beacon Academy

Wednesday Morning

Lustre sighed as she sat up in her bed, smoothing down her white kimono sleepwear. Reflexively she glanced over towards the other side of the room, knowing what she would see but still hoping beyond hope that the past few days had been just a bad dream.

Beryl and Evie were curled up upon the Cat Faunus' bed, the smaller girl on her back with the other curled up against her chest. The raven-haired girl was beginning to stir, her ears twitching slightly as her girlfriend's breath ghosted across them from where she lay and her tail beginning to swish lazily. On the other side of them…

An empty bed.

She shook her head morosely. For two nights they'd been out in Vale, actively searching for any sign of their missing leader. But it was as if the streets of the town had simply swallowed Pip and her Vacuo boyfriend Rufus up without a trace.

The futility of it all was beginning to wear on Evie, who wore the temporary mantle of leadership uncomfortably at best.

A thought occurred to her, causing the dusky-skinned girl to smile softly. Being a good teammate meant not just supporting each other, but also recognizing when they needed help. Or, in this case, perhaps a little relaxation.

She eased herself off of the bed and padded quietly over towards the others, extending a hand to gently shake the slumbering Cat Faunus.

As soon as she touched her, Evie's eyes shot open. "What-"

Lustre quickly clamped her hand over her friend's mouth. "I will be going to breakfast," she murmured. "And it occurred to me that our first activity of the day is with Professor Lazuli, who would not object to the two of you missing one simple combat class."

Evie's eyes crinkled as she removed her hand. "Are you telling me to stay in bed with my girlfriend?" she asked with quiet amusement.

"I am not suggesting anything at all," she replied loftily, but with amusement dancing in her eyes. "How you spend the first part of your day is entirely up to you. I shall see you at lunch?"

Evie nodded and gave her a wink. "Love you, sweetie."

"And I love you as well," she replied warmly. Turning, the silver-haired girl strode over to her dresser and quickly dressed for the day. She grabbed a few books, one of which was a novelization of the Reclamation and Rebuilding eras of Beacon following the Event, shot Evie one more smile, and then left the dorm room, closing the door quietly behind her.

Well, then. I have the morning to myself. I should take the time to relax as well.

She went through the breakfast line in the cafeteria, distracted by a conversation with the chef who'd found a new bounty of searingly hot spices that he wished to test out on her. She eagerly agreed, and promised to let him know if this dish actually managed to make her eyes water this time.

She sat at her usual place, setting her books beside her tray that held an omelette in a peculiar shade of green. Eyeing it curiously, she took a cautious bite of it and chewed thoughtfully.

Not bad. The spices do not overpower the flavor… Faintly woody, with a hint of… cinnamon? Quite pleasant.

She glanced over at the kitchen and gave the expectant chef a thumbs up, to which he smiled back amicably and shook his head as he walked into the back once more.

You shall have to do worse than that to break my record, she thought to herself smugly.

She was about to crack open her book when a friendly voice called out to her. Lustre glanced back up to see one of the few friends she had outside of her team approaching.

"Hello, Raye," she greeted the IRIS teammate warmly. "How have you been?"

"Oh, you know, getting by," the chestnut-haired Wolf Faunus replied with a small smile. Her furry ears were pressed against her head, indicating her true mood. "What about you? Have you… found anything at all?"

Lustre shook her head with a sigh. "No, nothing yet. I am confident we shall eventually…"

"But will you find her in time?" Raye whispered worriedly. "I mean… what if she were taken by those… monsters we keep hearing about?"

She shook her head once more, her messy silver locks swaying in the air. "No, I do not believe that is a possibility as it happened inside Vale. The disappearances occur outside the walls." She shot her friend a tight grin. "And besides, she and Beryl defeated one already. She would not let any Grimm best her."

Raye nodded, her ears perking up once more. "Well, alright then… Listen, you guys need anything at all, you let us know, okay? Even if it's covering for you while you're off searching. Anything at all."

"Thank you, Raye," she smiled warmly. "I appreciate the offer."

Once her friend left, she was once again left with her own thoughts, dismal as they might be.

She is not entirely wrong. The longer it takes to find Pip, the more adverse consequences might accumulate. But what else can we do?

Lustre finished off her omelette and stood to place it on the conveyor belt to carry it back to be washed. Her books in hand, she headed off towards her combat class with a heavy heart.

Surprisingly, Professor Lazuli met at at the door.

"Ah, Miss Bijou! Marvelous, I was hoping to see you. Are your teammates on their way as well?"

"Um, no sir," she replied hesitantly. "That is, I was hoping to allow them some time off from our… evening activities. That is, to rest up in anticipation of another long evening."

The nondescript man nodded, looking about before gesturing her to follow him into the classroom.

"Class, we will be starting soon. First opponents are up on the screen, please prepare yourselves." He continued to walk, Lustre on his heels, until he entered his office and closed the door behind them.

The room was comfortably cluttered, as befitted a veteran huntsman, with trophies, weapon manuals, broken-down weapons, and even a mask that she recognized as being from the historical White Fang. Lazuli gestured towards one of the stuffed chairs in front of his desk with his baton. "Please, have a seat."

Lustre settled down and looked at the professor expectantly. He did not take his seat, but instead paced restlessly behind the large desk, overburdened by papers and books.

"What I am about to tell you… I cannot reveal the source of. Suffice to say I trust this source implicitly." Lazuli paused to regard Lustre with solemn but still piercing blue eyes behind his spectacles. "I have information on your team leader's wherabouts."

The silver-haired girl immediately perched on the edge of her seat. "You do? Please, sir, can you tell me where?" she prompted eagerly.

Lazuli tapped his baton against his desk, gazing sightlessly through the wall. "Normally such information would be immediately turned over to Ozpin," he continued quietly. "But there are a number of extenuating circumstances. The first being my source, who needs to remain anonymous. The second, my knowledge that it would take some time to assemble a proper rescue, depending upon the ongoing duties of hunters that would allow for it."

He finally plopped himself down into his high-backed chair with a tired sigh. "And lastly, I have the utmost confidence in your team to handle this rescue attempt all on your own."

"We can do this, sir," Lustre nodded confidently. "Please, give me the details and we shall be on our way immediately.

Lazuli nodded firmly, extending his hand for her scroll. She complied, and received it back within seconds. "Coordinates have been input. Opposition should only consist of a number of android guards, as the bulk of the facility has been moved out of Vale. You must hurry, as Miss Cerise is scheduled to be moved as well by nightfall. Just… be prepared. She might not be in the best shape."

"And is Rufus Henna with her?"

"I am uncertain as to the fate of that young man, but I do know he is not with Miss Cerise. Now, go, you must hurry. I will make a Bulldog available for your use, and after your departure I shall provide my own authority to Ozpin to allow your mission."

Lustre nodded and bounced out of her seat, energized beyond measure.

"Miss Bijou."

She paused at the doorway. "Sir?"

"I am entrusting your team with this… mission, well beyond the scope of what mere students should be able to accomplish." He gave her a hard smile. "Do not disappoint me."

"We won't let you or Pip down, sir," she replied softly. With a final nod, she raced out of the office and across the classroom, ignoring the shocked outburst of the assembled students. She pushed her semblance and made it up to her dorm room in under a minute.

"I have news!" she exclaimed, bursting through the door excitedly.

She blinked her eyes, taking in the scene before her.

Both Evie and Beryl were still in bed, though both were partially unclothed. In fact, each one was missing their shirts.

And they were both taking avid advantage of that fact.

Three simultaneous screams echoed throughout the room as Lustre whirled back around, only to smack her nose into the door that had closed behind her in her shock.

"I am sorry! I am so very sorry!" she wailed. Though as she was holding one hand over her injured nose, the other being over her eyes, what came out was more, "Ib em sobby! Ib am so berry sobby!"

"Great hairy Grimm balls, Lustre!" Evie yelled. From the rustling behind her, she could tell her two teammates were scrambling to retrieve their clothing from wherever it had landed. "What the actual fuck?"

She gave her tender nose one more rub before dropping her hands. "I do apologise, truly! But I have Pip's location!"

"You do?" Evie squealed, followed by Beryl's excited cheer. "Where? Where is she?"

Lustre held up her scroll and wagged it in the air, still not looking around. "I have the coordinates. A Bulldog is waiting, courtesy of Professor Lazuli, but we must hurry! Please, gear up quickly!"

"Okay, okay, we're on it!" her blue-haired partner replied excitedly. "Um, you can turn around now, if you like…"

"That is quite alright. I am perfectly fine as I am."

Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen.

Somewhere Over Vale

Lustre eyed her fellow teammates as they peered out the window anxiously, deciding that she needed to break the silence.

"So… Are the two of you, er… more intimate, now?"

Both Beryl and Lustre blushed brightly. "Oum, do we need to talk about this?" her partner moaned softly.

Evie shook her head, still gazing out the window. "We owe it to her, sweetie. And to answer your question, Lustre… sorta?"

"That is not an answer."

"It is so."

"Evie…" Yes, Cat Faunus are naturally stubborn, but you do take it to all-new heights.

Beryl finally spoke up again. "We haven't actually, um… had sex." Her voice squeaked on the last word, which caused Evie to glance over at her girlfriend with an indulgent smile.

"I see." Lustre nodded thoughtfully. "Still, I do apologise again for… interrupting. Perhaps we should create a system to allow you use of the room. A signal of some sort?"

"Well, I thought the 'I'll see you at lunch' was a pretty good signal, myself," Evie commented sarcastically.

"Er, yes, well…" Lustre blushed. "That is very true."

"In the future, though, we'll be sure to send a message to your scrolls," Beryl piped in. "Something like, 'don't enter unless you want to incur the wrath of a Cat Faunus'."

Evie reached over with her tail and fondly bopped Beryl on the nose. "I don't think that would deter Pip," she snarked.

"Perhaps not," Lustre agreed. "But if you made your desire for privacy known, both she and I would respect it."

They sat in silence for another minute or two before Beryl spoke again.

"We're gonna find her there, right?"

"Yeah," Evie replied softly, wrapping an arm around her girlfriend. "We will, sweetie."

"We're almost at the drop point," the pilot interjected over the comm. "Fifteen seconds to drop, we'll circle and stay online to wait for your call."

The three girls stood as the side door opened, the wind shrieking past them and into the bay from their rapid speed. Lustre's eyes darted about, searching for the clearing she knew to be there.

"I see it," Evie barked, clutching her scimitar. "Meet you down there."

With that she disappeared, teleporting down. Beryl shared an amused glance with her partner.

"May as well join her," the blue-haired girl smirked.

"Indeed." Lustre pushed herself out into the air as they passed what she could now tell was a clearing in the trees, just large enough to accommodate a Bulldog. True to their word, their transport circled about at a distance while the two girls plummeted downward.

Lustre twirled her staff, firing several rounds at the ground to slow her descent. She landed in a crouch, her rifle to her shoulder as she sought out targets. Beryl landed with a clatter of armor, her shield out, carbine clutched in a firm grip, and her face a mask of stony resolve.

Evie waved to them from the edge of the clearing. "Found a door!" she called out.

They quickly joined her to investigate the portal. It was heavily reinforced and set into a small mound of grass.

"Don't suppose we have floor plans?" Beryl quipped.

"No, I am afraid not," Lustre replied evenly. "We shall have to do this the hard way."

Evie chuckled lightly, pulling her scimitar out. "Well, then, let's give them a nice big welcome, Team Pearl-style."

Lustre and Beryl stepped back as the Cat Faunus flipped a switch on the hilt of Dao. The she flung it downwards in an overhanded arc, the concussive blast shattering the reinforced steel door and blowing it down what appeared to be a long staircase. It clattered and bounced along the corridor, smashing through a number of androids who were coming up to intercept them.

"Honey, we're home!" Evie called out.

"Hope you kept dinner warm!" Beryl sang out as well, leading the charge down the steps with her shield held in front.

Lustre snickered softly as she brought up the rear, Winter Contus still held to her shoulder as a rifle. She had an odd family, to be sure, but they were fiercely protective of each other. And she knew their joking was simply their eagerness at finding the lost head of their little family unit, bleeding over into humor. She certainly couldn't fault them for that.

"You may need to put the door damages on our tab, however," she shouted over her teammate's heads.

And there was nothing wrong with joining in, either.

Several androids rounded the corner at the end of the stairwell, barging up with their rifles blazing. She returned fire as Beryl blocked most of the shots with Dahl. Her carbine barked several times, dropping more of their opponents, while Evie waited patiently for them to enter an open enough space for her to operate in.

Now that she was able to get a good look at them, Lustre thought she recognized the style of the androids. They weren't military, nor were they top-of-the-line. Definitely corporate, from the descriptions she'd read in her books, but from whom exactly?

She shook herself out of her ponderings as they reached the bottom. In any case, there was no logo to be seen, so they may as well just deal with the ones that remained there.

The chamber they found themselves in extended several stories below the platform they stood upon, with an observation room directly across from them. Some frantic activity could be seen in that room, sentients scrambling to organize resistance against the incursion currently underway.

Not that they'd give them the chance to do so.

"Lustre, Beryl," their temporary leader barked, gesturing towards an elevator at the end of the platform. "Get to the bottom, I'll meet you down there."

"Can you make that?" Beryl asked worriedly.

Evie shot her a grin. "Watch me."

And then she did just that, blinking across the space and into the windowed room. They could see her explode into motion, ruthlessly dealing with those she found inside.

"She can take care of herself, dear," Lustre reminded her teammate as they ran for the elevator.

"I know," Beryl grumbled. "Doesn't mean I won't worry."

They rode the elevator down in silence, listening to the watered-down music that filtered in from the speaker overhead.

"I hate elevator music," Beryl growled irritably.

"Yes, dear," Lustre signed affectionately.

"No, I mean it, it's an affront on the senses. I'm taking an elevator, not taking a nap! Then once I'm at the end of the trip, I'm all sleepy! It'd be better without any music at all!"

The silver-haired girl just shook her head in amusement, not deigning to respond to her partner's ranting.

Thankfully the doors opened soon thereafter to reveal a grinning Evie.

"Took you guys long enough," she snarked.

Beryl snorted and stood up on her tiptoes to give her a quick peck on the lips. "You're just lucky you're so damn cute."

"Too true, too true," Evie sang out as she skipped ahead of the pair, across smoking android wreckage strewn across the lobby. "Oh, do mind the mess."

"Did you find anything?" Lustre asked.

"I did indeed." Evie paused and gave them a broad smile. "Subject holding cells, right this way." She turned to the right and started walking down the corridor, now more cautious and with her scimitar held outwards.

"'Subject'?" Beryl murmured.

Lustre shook her head solemnly. "That does not sound promising."

Several hundred feet and a dozen broken androids later, they arrived at what must have been the cell block. Three solid metal doors lined each side of the chilly concrete passageway, even more heavily reinforced than the one aboveground. Five of the doors were open, the one remaining door at the end sealed shut and with an electronic keypad.

The three girls stood around and stared at the entry method.

"I don't suppose any of you know how to crack a lock like this?" Evie asked hesitantly.

Beryl shook her head. "Sorry, didn't have that sort of upbringing."

"Maybe there's another key or something on one of the androids?"

"I think they'd just open it remotely, using their neural interface. What about from the control room?"

Evie sighed. "No, I checked that before I left, there was no option to do that from there."

"So, what do we do now? If we break the door down, it might hurt Pip inside…"

Lustre stepped forward. "May I try something?"

Both Beryl and Evie retreated to give her room. "By all means," the Cat Faunus replied expressively.

The silver-haired girl nodded before planting the end of her staff on the keypad and squeezing the trigger. The key mechanism disintegrated in a bright flash, revealing sparking wires and twisted metal as she brought Winter Contus back down to her side.

The door popped open slightly with a creak of hinges that badly needed oiling.

Her two teammates stared at her in awe. "How did you know to do that?" Beryl whispered, impressed.

Lustre shrugged with a small smirk. "I had a hunch."

Evie shook her head, wordlessly pushing past them and into the darkened room as she sheathed her scimitar. The light allowed from the hallway showed a huddled naked form in the corner, curled up and in a fetal position. Her blonde hair spilled out like a grimy, bloody yellow blanket.

"Pip," her partner breathed, rushing forward but resting a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder. "Hey, sweetie, we're here."

The form shivered slightly before peering up from beneath the curtain of matted hair. "Evie?" she croaked. "Am… am I d- dreaming?"

"No, sweetie," Evie sobbed in relief, leaning down to hold her friend to her tightly now. "We're here, I promise you, and we're gonna get you out, okay?"

"O- Okay," Pip whispered hoarsely.

"Can you walk?"

"I d- don't think s- so…"

Evie reached under her friend, picking her lanky form up in her arms as if she weighed nothing. She turned to the others, her eyes blazing with determination as Pip trembled miserably in her embrace.

"Clear a path," she ordered quietly. "We're leaving."

Beryl nodded and strode out of the room, Evie right on her heels. Lustre wordlessly took rear guard once more, her weapon held ready.

Her eyes were troubled, however, as she reflected on the state of the cell that they'd found Pip in. The bare concrete walls had been lined with scorch marks as if there had been a great conflagration inside.

She didn't like the implications of that one bit.

Beacon Academy Infirmary

The three exhausted teammates sat on a bench outside the room where Pip lay. It was a familiar enough situation for Lustre and Evie, having gone through the same thing when Beryl had been critically injured in the Vytal Festival tournament. It was a different infirmary and in a different kingdom, but the place seemed familiar enough nonetheless.

They looked up as a grey-haired figure entered the room. "Good afternoon, students," Ozpin greeted them genially. "I was happy to hear of your successful rescue today."

"Thank you, sir," Evie whispered tiredly. "Do you know how her... condition is?"

"She is stable," he replied hesitantly. "But…" He sighed as he took a seat across from them, leaning on his cane. "Miss Cerise has been changed somewhat during her imprisonment. It would appear that she has been… experimented on."

Evie quickly clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified, while Beryl's eyes bulged out in shock. Lustre felt the tears form at the confirmation of her suspicions.

"It is like the Grimm that she and Beryl fought, is it not?" she whispered hesitantly. "They did something to her, because of her semblance…"

Ozpin nodded morosely. "We're working on figuring out how to reverse or treat it… But that will take some time. For now… you may visit her. Just, please do try and keep her calm."

The three friends stood and walked hesitantly into the room where their leader was resting. Pip immediately looked up at them, a wan smile on her face.

"Hey, guys," she murmured.

Lustre walked around the far side of the bed, while Beryl and Evie stood with their arms around each other for support. The room was filled with blinking and beeping monitoring machines, and several intravenous lines were run into her arms. She had never seen her friend look so… deflated. Shrunken.

Defeated.

"Can we get anything for you?" she whispered.

"Nah, I'm good, babe," the blonde reassured her with false cheer. Her hair was clean and silky again, laying out across her pillow like a fan, a far cry from how they'd found her.

The Cat Faunus sniffled. "I wanna jump on you and hug you and snuggle you and never let you go," she confessed quietly. "But I don't want to hurt you, either."

Pip smiled, a forced and brittle thing. "Can't hurt me any, kitty cat. Not… any more than I already have been."

Evie finally let the tears flow and lunged forward to land on Pip's chest. "I'm sorry we took so long to find you!" she wailed inconsolably.

Unfortunately she neglected to release her hold around her girlfriend before her plunge, and so Beryl was brought along for the ride. She managed to wiggle out from under Evie's arm that was pinning her, but remained leaning against Pip with a watery smile. "Glad to see you back again, Pip."

The blonde reached up with a hesitant hand before gently scritching in between Evie's Faunus ears, and returned Beryl's smile with a small one of her own, this one less forced. "Glad to be back, babe," she replied solemnly. "And don't any of you feel guilty about waiting to find me, okay? You did find me, and that's all that matters." Her voice was growing stronger, as if she were drawing strength from her teammates being in such close proximity. Lustre picked up on this and quickly stepped forward to lay a hand on her arm, giving it a gentle squeeze.

Pip closed her eyes tiredly. "You guys found me… I knew you would, I knew you'd find me before they could take me away… I just…" She let out a shuddering sigh. "I wish I could forget what they did to me." The last was uttered in a barely audible whisper, but one that almost caused physical pain in Lustre to hear.

"You know we are here for you now," Lustre murmured reassuringly. "We will not prompt you to tell us anything, but when you are ready, we shall listen."

Pip's eyes remained closed, though tears began to leak from them and trail down her cheeks as she drew in a shuddering breath. "There was so much pain," she whispered brokenly.

Evie and Beryl sat up abruptly at her words, looking at her in concern. "Pip," Evie breathed. "Sweetie, you don't have to-"

"It hurt so, so very much," Pip continued as if she hadn't heard her. "But that wasn't the worst of it, if it were just me, I could have… could have handled it… but…"

Lustre's hand flew off of her friend's arm as she noticed the skin temperature begin to rise. She stared at the arm in front of her with incredulous eyes, unsure if she were really seeing what her senses were telling her.

"They…"

Pip's veins began to glow, the crimson color increasing with her anguish.

"They started on him first…"

The glowing extended throughout her body, as the temperature in the room increased. Where her hands lay on the bed began to smolder, the tendrils of smoke drifting up lazily in the air conditioning of the infirmary room.

"I watched him die…"

Pip's fists clenched, and wisps of fire began to lick up from them. The intravenous tubes melted off, spilling fluid onto the floor, and alarms began to beep insistently.

"He's dead..." the blonde choked desolately, the tears evaporating from her cheeks as soon as they escaped from her eyes.

"Pip, please, you must calm down!" Lustre shouted in a panic, breaking the others from their trance.

The blonde didn't listen, just tossed her head from side to side without opening her eyes. The singed spots under her hands were spreading, and if they didn't do something soon she might catch the entire bed on fire. Where are the Dust-damned nurses? she thought angrily.

And then Evie did something incredibly brave, as well as incalculably idiotic.

She threw herself onto Pip once more.

"Pip, stop it!" she screamed, burying her face into her partner's shoulder and clinging to her tightly. As soon as she reached her, parts of her torso began to smolder where she brushed up against Pip's clenched fists. "Pip!"

And then the blonde sucked in a shocked breath, gasping loudly as if she'd been hit in the face by a bucketfull of ice-cold water. Indeed, the temperature in the room quickly climbed back down again, the red in her veins dulling until they were no longer visible.

Finally the door to the room slammed open to admit a rush of nurses and doctors. They attempted to pry the sobbing Cat Faunus off of their patient, but that act was inhibited by both of the girls now clinging tightly to each other, as well as the firm interference by her other teammates. Eventually Ozpin himself entered the room to restore order, and they were left with just the head doctor and one nurse, who was frantically trying to reattach the intravenous tubes and clean up the mess.

"We'll need new sheets," she was grumbling irritably.

"Later, Nurse Olive. If you are done, please leave us," the doctor commanded briskly. Ozpin stood aside to allow her exit, and then closed the door again, standing in front of it to bar any further interruptions.

"Feeling better now, Miss Cerise?" the doctor asked in a far more kindly tone.

Pip nodded wearily. "Um, if it's okay… Can Evie stay like this? She's keeping me calm."

The Cat Faunus was now curled up across Pip's lap like an oversized housecat, her arms and tail wrapped around her partner's midsection.

Beryl chuckled from her spot next to Lustre. "Good thing I'm not the jealous type."

Both Evie and Pip shot her an amused grin before returning their attention to the doctor.

"That's fine for now. I think we might have been able to discover some medicine for your, er, condition. I was actually on my way to discuss this with you when you had your… incident."

Pip nodded, sitting up straighter. "You have a cure?" she asked excitedly.

"Not exactly, no… What we can do is give you a shot, it will need to be readministered daily."

"What exactly will this shot do, doctor?" Lustre inquired politely.

The doctor sighed as he crossed his arms. "Understand, please, that this is the best we can come up with for now, unless we get more data. As you might have heard, the followup investigative team that visited the site of your rescue found only a smoking crater."

The four team members glanced at each other warily. They most certainly had not heard about that.

"In any case, to answer your question… What this shot will do is to dull your aura. Doing so will also cause your condition to recede down to manageable levels. There are a few side effects, however."

"Okay," Pip whispered hoarsely. "Such as?"

"You will be unable to access your semblance. The lowered aura levels will also weaken you physically and emotionally." He held up a hand to forestall the protest on Pip's lips. "Think of your condition as an infection. Not one that can travel to others externally, but rather throughout your body. Extreme emotional states, as you have seen, will trigger the infection to spread, or flare up. This medicine will keep it in check, until we can figure out a better solution."

Lustre cleared her throat as the others digested the doctor's words. "What are the consequences of not taking the medicine?" she asked, knowing it would be on Pip's mind.

"If this remains unchecked…" The doctor sighed, glancing down at the floor. "Rampant emotions will cause it to spiral out of control. What you did today to subdue it won't always work, and if it gets out of control… I don't know if you could stop."

Pip blinked uncertainly. "Meaning…?"

"Meaning there's a high probability you could self-combust."

The silence in the room was thick enough to cut with Pip's Odachi Dahlia, until Beryl finally spoke to summarize pretty much everyone's feelings on the matter.

"Well, Grimmshit."

Undisclosed Location in Atlas

The suited man relaxed in his chair behind the desk of his newest office. He made sure that each lair had this room created to his exact specifications, replicating to the most minute detail the study that had existed in his ancestral home.

It gave him a sense of continuity. Not to mention a balm on his temper, something that he would be drawing upon for the upcoming meeting.

As expected, the door to his study opened to reveal the petite form of Whisper. "My Lord, your visitors have arrived," she stated deferentially before stepping back with a bow.

Damian Schnee strode past his diminutive subordinate, the hereditary blue eyes hard as the proverbial ice. Malachite hid the smirk behind his careful mask of indifference, noting that he had switched tailors for his white three-piece suit to match his own charcoal one.

Behind the Schnee Dust Company CEO walked his younger sister, Frost. As usual she wore an impractical-looking miniskirt and tube top outfit with an abbreviated short-sleeved jacket and tall boots, all in the usual white color motif. At her side was the ever-present Myrtenaster, the heirloom weapon made famous by the legendary huntress Weiss Schnee.

Malachite knew that, despite the air of confidence and authority that Damian carried himself with, his sister was the far more dangerous of the siblings, at least when it came to physicality. Not that Malachite had needed to get his hands dirty in a very long time.

That's what underlings were for, after all.

"Mr Schnee," he greeted the approaching man, injecting his voice with warmth. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"

"Vale," Damian replied shortly, his white goatee trembling as he tried to contain the emotions that surely raged inside of him. "What the hell happened?"

Malachite waved his concerns away with a careless hand. "Do not concern yourself with that, at best it was a minor setback for a side project."

"I thought Phase Two was integral to the plan?" the Schnee elder bit out.

"Not at all. Phase Two would have accelerated things nicely, but in the long run it was unnecessary. And as far as the Vale facility is concerned, it was research and development only. The staging area is still protected and whole, there was no way to link the two of them. In fact, I took care of the breached facility myself."

"Yes, with a giant Dust-damned crater," Damian growled irritably. "Is this what you call keeping a low profile?"

Malachite slowly rose to his feet, his pale green eyes glittering. "No, my friend, I call it a necessary casualty in the opening stages of my grand war that we are about to embark upon." He gave his partner a hard smile. "You aren't getting… cold feet, now, are you?"

The white-haired man sighed, deflating slightly. Malachite was amused to note that Frost relaxed almost imperceptibly as well, sensing that the need to intervene had passed. "Not at all, Lord Malachite. I was simply concerned about any of this leading back to… us."

You mean back to yourself. He nodded amicably and returned to his seat once more. "Do not be concerned with that. All of the androids you have provided for facility security have had any identifying characteristics removed. There's no other way for them to be traced back, correct?"

Something flashed across Damian's eyes which immediately put him on edge, as fleeting as it was. "No, of course not," the head of the Schnee family assured him smoothly.

Interesting. Why would you lie about this, Damian? What have you overlooked, and will it cause me problems in the future?

Unfortunately, he still needed the Schnees at this point in time, and so could not jeopardise his relationship with them just yet by demanding, or extracting, answers.

Not just yet.

"Very well then," Malachite smiled. "If there is nothing else…?"

"No, indeed. Thank you for your assurances, I'll leave you to your work."

Damian and Frost turned to leave, but before they did so the sister froze, her eyes widening as she noticed something in the shadows clustered around the far corner of the room.

Ah, yes my dear, it's unwise to drop your guard around here.

Soon enough she completed the turn and followed her brother out. Whisper closed the door behind them and departed to escort them back to the surface.

He waited for a few heartbeats before speaking again.

"Leech."

From the corner of the room came the tall, gangly form of his most trusted henchman. "Yes, My Lord?"

Malachite sat back in his chair, his eyes glittering dangerously. "There are… loose ends that need tied up."

Leech smiled, the action causing his face to pull back in a grimace that made him appear even more skeletally gaunt.

"Those are my specialty," he replied with just a hint of eagerness.

A/N: Yay for the making with the rescuing! Now Pip just has to deal with the fallout from her ordeal… And, just as a side note, I really am having fun writing Evie and Beryl's relationship. Quite adorable.

I felt like I had to push this one out quickly, leaving with the last chapter on such a down note, especially after the Season 3 finale. Apologies especially to TacoKing23 for doing such terrible things to the emotions of my followers and readers. I mean, yeah I meant to do that anyways, but the finale just compounded it unnecessarily. I'd rather rip your metaphorical hearts out all on my own, thank you very much.

Wait, that didn't really come out quite right…

Anyways, much love for reading, favoriting, following, and reviewing!

Stay shiny!