AN: There's a large correction in chapter 8 which is relevant to the plot as whole, so please read that. A bigger note is at the end of the of the chapter.
Chapter 9: The Masters of the Underworld
The thick smoke coiled around the dark room in search for the slightest opening to make an escape from the tense atmosphere that settled over the room like a blanket. The palpable tension radiated in waves from the menacing group sitting around the only table in the seemingly shrinking room.
The aged wooden table with the high-backed chairs was occupied by the six of the seven Masters of the Underworld. The Dukes and Duchesses, Count and Countesses, and the Henchmen of the London Underworld stage spread out from the table like rippled water. Some clung onto bar as if their life depended on it, others sunk into the crimson sofas littering the room, avoiding all eyes.
They all knew that the people that held their lives in the palm of their hands were severely displeased with the recent death of the Bishop. None of them wanted to displease their masters or to give them a reason to act out their frustrations. And so they kept their eyes planted on the floor, quick eyes sneaking glances at the quivering women around the perimeter of the smoke filled room.
The barely clad, feminine bodies pressed up against the walls, eyes glued to hard floor beneath their feet. Their masters hardly ever gathered and if they did, one could safely assume something big went down – that's when they most unpredictable; either nearly maniacally ecstatic or downright volatile. The either extreme was usually taken out on the girls and they'd rather not speed up what they knew to be in store for them.
So they kept their heads down and tried not to shiver with disgust everytime they felt another pair of eyes looking them up and down like meat for sale.
The pale Queen cast green eye across the room, taking in the drawn faces of the girls delivered by Frollo the previous day. It was one of his worse deliveries. The girls were sallow skinned with eyes that seemed too large for their sucked in faces. Stick thin arms and ribs that prodded out from beneath their skin – they would cost more in their upkeep than they could bring in.
The Queen wanted to scoff. The Bishop failed them once again and ended up getting himself killed.
She didn't care that he was dead – she never cared much for the man, holding him in contempt – there was plenty of men and women far more capable than Frollo to take his place as the Duke of the Underworld. The Queen, however, cared that the police could get the wind of who was involved in the vast syndicate. She knew that the force couldn't do anything to them; it was well paid off in all the right places, Weselton being one of the Dukes himself.
No, they wouldn't get charged, she knew that much, but the attention from the presses, if they caught wind of their activities, would make it extremely time-consuming to disappear into the shadows once again.
The Queen wasn't worried, it was more of an annoyance that such a thing had happened.
She dragged her eyes from the malnourished girls to the Grandmaster of the Underworld. The nearly green skinned woman with high cheekbones and a haughty, arrogant air – Maleficent.
The Grandmaster wore a mask of indifference, her hand firmly clasped on the table in front of her. Diablo, her right hand man, stood behind her with Maleficent's staff resting against his shoulder, and a barely there smirk on his lips. His loyalty to the Grandmaster was ocean's deep and steady like a heartbeat, and many thought the two were involved due to it. But the Queen knew that Maleficent didn't care an ounce for such trivial things as emotional intimacy.
A throat being cleared brought the Queen out of her silent contemplations and she turned her green eyes to meet the brown eyes of Hades, another of the Masters of the Underworld.
"So, when's your man coming?" his slick voice drawled out while he raised the glass of amber liquid to his lips. His eyes were trained on her, looking for the slightest crack in her apathetic mask.
She regarded him coolly for a minute, feeling the eyes of the ones closest to the two of them turn to look at her as well.
"Soon," she pronounced curtly.
The Queen could feel Maleficent's slight smile on her neck.
"Awfully precise, Queenie," Hades drawled, passing his fingers through his blue hair, and leaned back in his chair, thin smile on his lips.
The Queen chose not to respond to his small taunt, opting instead to glare at him until the muscular man chuckled and broke the eye contact. She could still feel Maleficent's eyes on her and she turned her head to meet the Grandmaster's dark eyes.
"I trust you know what you're doing," the green skinned woman pronounced carefully when their eyes met.
"Of course," the Queen answered her quickly.
She knew Maleficent trusted her on some level. She trusted her enough with the dealings of the Underworld to let her reign her sect more or less freely. The Queen, however, knew not to overstep her boundaries – she had seen what had happened to those who did such a foolish thing, such as Captain Hook, and didn't want to share their fate. Her beauty was one of her strongest assets and hell would freeze over before she let anything damage it.
As such, the Queen cleared it with Maleficent before she set Shan Yu on the mystery killer. The Grandmaster shared her annoyance with Frollo and wanted the situation sorted as quietly and quickly as possible. Already have the presses started snooping, the fact that Anna Bunker was put on the case only heightened their curiosity and it wouldn't be long until they linked Frollo with the syndicate.
The killer needed to be removed from the picture before then, and Shan Yu was the best for the job.
The heavy door opened and the Queen titled her head to take in the young woman and the hulking man who passed through the threshold.
She recognised the young, blonde woman as Aurora – the girl that Maleficent essentially owned due to an old debt with the girl's father. Aurora's father was a Member of the Parliament only because of the need of the Underworld, and heavily borrowed money from the syndicate.
It seemed like the most logical thing to the man to put his daughter as his assurance for a particularly large loan. He probably thought he would be able to pay back the ridiculous amount. However that didn't happen and when the young woman turned sixteen she became Maleficent's contemporary slave.
Maleficent made use of the young woman, making her join the force as their mole. Aurora provided, in the years she served in the London Met., the syndicate with valuable information on a large range of cases. The information she provided protected a great number of sects from police raids over the years, but at the same time cost many men and women their fingers and lives.
The Queen passed her eyes over the man accompanying Aurora, realising that it was Shan Yu, and noted the look of distaste on the man's grey face. Surely, he must have heard about what happened to Frollo and gathered why he was called before the nearly entire assembly of the Underworld.
The tense mood seemed to intensify as the two newcomers stopped in front of the aged table. Aurora visibly swallowed and her blue, nearly violet eyes, darted around the room in a nervous manner. The Queen glanced at Maleficent from the corner of her eye, seeing the well disguised pleasure darting across her feature, forming her lips into her signature smirk.
"I understand you know why you've been called here," the Grandmaster began, eyes firmly planted on her two underlings. She waited for them to nod before continuing, "In the light of Frollo's murder we need to take action."
The green skinned woman paused again, gaze zeroing in on the young woman who stood a little straight under the dark gaze. But the Queen saw the way the young officer's eyes widened fearfully and how her back seemed to tremble with desire to bend and bow away from the Grandmaster's unnerving gaze.
She wanted to scoff at the blonde woman, she ought to worshipping the ground Maleficent walked on, and here she was trembling like a child.
"Aurora, I need you to gather information about the case. Who's on it, what they know and whom they suspect. Understood?"
The blonde woman nodded slowly, her trembling frame making her voice quake. "Yes ma'am."
Maleficent turned her dark eyes to the hulking man beside the girl whom she viewed as a daughter dressed in rags of a slave.
"And you Shan Yu, I want you to track down the killer and make sure he never repeats his perpetration again. Understood?"
The man grunted in response.
Maleficent raised her eyebrow, "Understood?" She repeated the question slower, drawing out each syllable with a promise of pain should the man chose to be stubborn.
The room grew, if at all possible, even tenser. The leaders of the Underworld drew in a collective breath in anticipation. They all knew that tone of voice and what usually followed it and wanted to see if the infamously barbaric man would concede and come to heel or act like an untrained dog.
The large man shifted under the weight of Maleficent's gaze.
"Yes ma'am."
"Are you sure this is where Shan Yu went in?" Elsa asked Olaf for the umpteenth time.
"Yup!" Olaf replied cheerfully, a bright smile on his lips. "This is the place, Els."
Elsa sighed and slouched into the leather of the passenger seat. A completely undignified pout breaking out across her face.
They've been waiting outside the shabby looking warehouse for the past hour and managed to see absolutely no one go in or out of it during that time. It frustrated Elsa to end, she thought that perhaps it was a decoy set up to throw people like her and Olaf of the Underworld's meetings, rare as they were. It made sense the more Elsa thought about it.
They've just wasted their time following up a lead that was more than likely a dead end. It annoyed Elsa. She cold, wearing only a t-shirt in face of the wet evening, and terribly, horribly bored. She could be a home studying the notes of Shan Yu or thinking up of ways to seduce Anna without exposing her true colours in the process. Instead of doing either of the things she was stuck out on a desolate parking lot observing the warehouse which she was sure housed none of her desired targets.
She huffed and glanced at Olaf who was fiddling with the camera straps with a content expression painted on his face.
The blonde woman sighed and shifted in her seat. "Olaf, let's just go it's probab-"
"Wait!" the dark haired man held up his camera in the direction of the warehouse and Elsa followed the lens with her eyes.
Sure enough, the hulking figure of what Elsa could only hope was the Mongolian mercenary exited the building. She squinted at the figure advancing away from the building in a feeble attempt of trying to place any defining features on the figure.
She heard Olaf quickly snapping pictures of the figure and Elsa tilted her head to look at her companion.
"Is it him?" she asked quietly.
The man continued taking the pictures. "Yup!"
She turned her face toward the disappearing figure and raised a brow. She leaned back into the leather of her seat and allowed a smirk to pass over her lips.
"We should follow him," she suggested, leaning her elbow on the arm rest and resting her in the palm of her hand.
"We won't find out anything from that. Flynn is in there, we could ask him what happened," Olaf suggested lightly, removing the camera from his eye and turned to give her a bright smile.
Flynn? As in Eugene?
Elsa nodded. If the meeting was an all Underworld event then Eugene would surely be there amongst other croons that ran London from the shadows.
She was mildly surprised when she first found out about Eugene's connection with the Underworld. She was introduced to him by Rapunzel when the two where still dating and it wasn't until a few months after when she was preparing her notes and list that she stumbled upon the revelation. She didn't tell Rapunzel of course, why would she do that. She instead used it as a threat against Eugene to have him work on her behalf.
It seemed the fear of possibly losing the brunette had Eugene agreeing rapidly under the condition that Punzel wouldn't hear a word of his involvement with the syndicate. And Elsa, being true to her word, hadn't told the petite woman. Yet.
The man in question had stepped out of the warehouse and headed towards the parking lot where Olaf parked his Lexus. Elsa could see his features illuminated in the only working orange tinted streetlight in the parking lot and sat up a little straighter when their eyes connected through the windshield.
He hadn't been expecting her if Elsa could say from the startled expression on his face and the halt in his step. He quickly recovered and continued walking towards the dark grey car.
Olaf unlocked the door and the brunet climbed into the middle seat in the back.
"So what happened?" Olaf asked , turning his body in his seat to face the new passenger.
"Maleficent put Shan Yu and Aurora on Snow Queen case," the brunet answered cautiously, eyes darting between the two friends in the front.
"Snow Queen case?" Elsa piped up, half turning in her seat.
"Yeah, you know, Claude Frollo's murder? The newspaper are loosing it. They think it's a serial killer. So, this woman from the Guardian, what was it? Belle something? Anyway, she ran this whole article on it and now people are loosing it. Honestly Els, do you not read the news or something?" The man chuckled.
Elsa stared him down and he cleared his throat, realising that Elsa was not amused.
"Anyway, Maleficent asked the Khan to take care of the killer and her little slave to keep tabs on the police. Nothing more than that other than a few spats amongst the Counts and Countesses, all of them want to replace Frollo, be closer to the big guys."
Eugene rubbed his palms against the jean of his trousers and awaited the two's verdict.
Olaf nodded and gave him a smile that eased the man. "Alright, thanks Flynn! Want me to drop you back home?"
"If you don't mind," the brunet smiled sheepishly.
Elsa picked it as her time to leave. She bid the two men farewell and exited the vehicle, leaving the door open so Eugene could sit in front beside Olaf. She made her way across the parking lot and unlocked her car waiting in the shadows.
She didn't waste time and drove off quickly in the direction of her apartment. Her notes were in a deep need of an update.
The morning light hit Anna square in the eye and the redhead groaned. She rolled over on her front in an attempt to block out the offending stimulus, the pounding of her head was bad enough without a further insult. Anna inhaled the barely there scent of Elsa still clinging to her pillow from two nights prior and smiled to herself, hugging the pillow.
She carefully opened her eyes, deciding that if she was to wake up to the smell so uniquely Elsa it wouldn't hurt too bad to open her eyes and face the onslaught of colours.
She eyed the bedside clock and pouted.
6:45
She had a few more hours to kill before she had to come into the office and try to piece together the minuscule evidence in an attempt to find the killer.
She buried her face in the pillow, basking in Elsa's scent, and decided to go for an early morning run. It always cleared her head and gods above knew she needed it after last night.
The redheaded detective threw back the covers and made her way to the conjoining bathroom. She paused in front of the mirror to admire the fading marks left by Elsa two nights previous and grinned, relishing the memories of the blonde coming undone beneath her. They needed to re-enact the night of passion, soon.
With that thought Anna turned on the shower and slipped under the warm stream of water.
She was ready in less than twenty minutes, a personal record of hers, and steered her car through the quickly filling roads of London. She pulled the car into the nearest parking lot beside Hyde Park and stretched her muscles before starting the jog through the green scenery.
Her pounding headache ebbed away with each meter and she relished the feeling of her mind clearing. Anna passed the few early risers on her way through fast park, nodding her head in a way of a 'hello'.
She pushed all her worries from last night into the back of her mind, willing herself to forget them, and just as she was sure they were gone, the head of the person she spend last evening with came into her sight.
Anna contemplated leaving Elsa be and just continue running, but the sight of her back turned to her, completely unsuspecting made Anna change her mind. She quickened her pace and quietened her steps and within moments she was behind Elsa.
The blonde woman still hadn't noticed her and so Anna did what any other person would've done in that situation.
She dug her fingers into the gorgeous blonde's sides, eliciting a surprised yelp from the woman. Elsa turned around with lighting speed and Anna miscalculated her step, twisting her ankle and falling into the blonde. Elsa had a second to catch a glimpse of her attacker before the world shifted vertically.
"Whoops!" Anna threw her arms around the back of Elsa's head, cushioning the impact with the concrete.
Next thing the either woman knew they were lying on the ground in the middle of Hyde Park, blue meeting blue. Their faces inches apart and a crimson dusting of a blush colouring Anna's cheeks.
"Hi."
AN: First of all thank you to everyone who favourited/followed/reviewed! You seriously make my day. Second of all, I would like to apologise for the nearly month long break – I had my exams and end of year stuff but now that that's done I'll have time to write again so you can expect (hopefully) weekly updates :) And third of all, this fanfiction has now been added to the Elsanna community which is a great honour and a mark of how far this fic has come. I never expected that to happen and I'm truly grateful to all of ye, bualadh bos lads!
As always if you enjoyed this chapter please tell me in the reviews or through a pm. We're finally getting into the plot and that in itself is exciting.
Thank you for reading and again thanks for the continued support :)
