CHAPTER 14

Velvet and her team did not take long to find the supposed hideout of some of Ratel's group in the adjoining Mosaic Canyon. There, several dozen kilometers from their campsite the night before, was a canopy that was camouflaged against any aerial reconnaissance From what they could see, the area was not very fortified, they only saw a pair of guards, older, middle-aged man and a woman, dressed in identical brown fatigues, tinted sunglasses, as well as, in one of their cases, a tan scarf wrapped around her mouth. When one of them raised a pair of binoculars to scan the area around them, the four ducked their heads under the boulder that they were hiding behind, overlooking the rim of the canyon. When they all huddled around together, Velvet cleared her throat, accidentally garnering all attention on her. When she noticed this, rather than make herself look foolish, she muttered a small 'alright' and offered her opinion on the matter. "I think that this shouldn't be too difficult of a matter to follow, so not all of us need to go down there. If everyone is alright with it, I'd like to volunteer myself and Kandase to go down and handle the guards. Ceril, Dew, if you're alright with it, I would like you two being our lookouts and making sure that we aren't caught totally off-guard by some sort of trap being sprung. Does that sound alright to you three?" She took a deep breath afterwards, having only taken a single breath in all of the time that it took her to instruct and seek out the insight of the situation placed in front of them from her teammates.

Kandase was the first to beam a smile, eagerly nodding. "Oh, yeah. It's been too damn long since I've had a chance to kick some butt." She popped her knuckles and her neck, gaining an annoyed, sideways glance from Dew.

"I, uh, don't quite understand why C and I have to stay behind while you and...her get to have all the fun."

It was there that Velvet gave a lesson that had been taught to her once, as well as one that Kandase had taught others. "Combat isn't all about heroics. Sometimes, for the good of the group, you need to play to your own strengths in order to help the entire unit succeed. You and Ceril are much more effective, with your abilities and weapons, from a distance. It would take too much strain on my Semblance to cast a Hard-Light copy from that far away, and Kandase can't hit any targets from this distance, which looks to be about 15, 20 meters." She then added a set of words that she had never uttered to anyone, in recent memory. "Trust me. I know what I'm doing."

Kandase eyed Velvet with a look of pride and satisfaction that made her herself feel warm inside. Dew, taking Velvet's words and analyzing her own feelings about them, slowly nodded. "That makes sense. Just don't get yourself killed alright?"

Velvet grunted with an inflection at the end. "Same goes to you." Dew nodded and turned to Ceril. "You got any scopes for that thing? Or do you just use iron-sights?" Dew asked him, eyeing for any bulges in his pockets.

"I do just fine with irons, thank you very much." Ceril whispered, crossing his arms over his chest for a second before flipping the strap of his weapon to place it in his hands. Dew gave him an incredulous look.

"Did you just call them irons?"

"Erm-" He cleared his throat, running his fingers along the grooves of the gun. "Yeah."

She pointed her index finger, poking it into his chest. "You're weird. You're a weird guy."

Ceril looked over to Velvet and Kandase, asking for help with his eyes. "Alright. We have our assignments. Let's get to work."

Velvet took point with Kandase in tow as she began to step out from behind the boulder. Before she was able to stick out her entire leg, a burst of fire kicked up the dust mere centimeters from it, sending an impulse in her brain to send it flying back. "What the crap was that?" Dew loudly whispered.

"Well, I suppose that the element of surprise is off the table. How did they know that we were here?" Velvet thought out loud, leaning against the rock as she looked up to the afternoon sky, racking her brain for a possible answer. From the opposite side of the rock, Kandase declared that she had the answer. "I think I know how."

Velvet carefully crawled over a prone Ceril and a crouched Dew to make her way to Kandase. There, she looked into a small mirror that Kandase had produced, likely from one of her many pockets on her suspenders, and leaned further back so Velvet would be able to see what she herself had already seen. Then, she let out a small gasp, not only for the shock of the answer, but because of how she could have let herself overlook such a vital detail.

"She's a Faunus."

"What?" Dew said in a normal speaking voice, leaving behind her silent voice.

"She said that one of the guards is a-" he began to whisper.

"Oh, I know what she said, Ceril! And you don't need to whisper. The frickin' Faunus chick has been toying with us the whole time! Damn!" She slammed the flat end of her fist into the rock behind her.

"Easy! We're not out of this yet. Don't forget that we have a Faunus of our own, who likely outdoes the other one on a whole bunch of scales. And, yes. I meant for her to hear that, and I know she did." Kandase said with a small smirk. "How are we going to do this, V?" She turned her eyes to Velvet, looking to her for direction and guidance.

Velvet, taken aback by the leadership position that had fallen into her lap once more, took a deep breath, thinking of a plan of action that would allow them to all walk away alive. Once such a course of action had formed within her mind, she turned to Ceril. "Ceril, if Kandase offers you a sort of smokescreen, do you think you could into a position to offer covering fire?"

Now it was Ceril's turn to smirk. "You give me the smoke, I'll do the smoking." He hefted his weapon.

Velvet waved her hand to ensure that Ceril stayed in their realm of reality. Wanting to ensure the total secrecy of their plan, or at least a certain portion of it, she slipped out a piece of paper from her satchel strapped to her back, as well as a pencil, and began to write down onto it.

Intimidation shots only. Only shoot to kill if you absolutely have to.

Ceril made short time of reading it, looking up to Velvet with a stern face. "You got it. I'll give them what for, and then some." To show that he wasn't serious, he gave a small wink to Velvet before leaning against the rock, awaiting the promised smokescreen. Upon seeing this, Velvet leaned over and whispered in a barely audible voice into Kandase's ear.

"Do what you do best."

Kandase scrunched her face. "You want me to kill them?"

"What? No, no, no. I-"

"Ah, don't sweat it, Velvet. I know what you mean." Giving a bellowing laugh, she called out to their enemies within the canyon. "Hey, there, creepos! I'd hate to pull the wool over your eyes, so I'll use smoke instead!"

Velvet didn't mention it to anyone, but at the last second, she realized that there was a small chance that the Faunus would be able to see through the smoke. As it came across her mind, Kandase had already leapt into the air and dispensed an explosive throwing knife, giving Ceril the signal to sprint from his own hiding place and execute his portion of the plan. She hoped that her plan would work, so she would have such a guilt of failure upon her shoulders.

Thankfully, that portion of the plan did, miraculously, go off without a hitch. She could hear the two guards from across the way become disoriented, calling out to each other amidst the cloud of dust and the aftermath of the large explosion. Velvet heard the sounds of popping consistent with gunfire from her right side. When she could hear Velvet calling her name, ushering her forward, she hopped over the rock into the dust. With her heightened vision, the otherwise-impairing layer of dirt proved no hinderance to her vision.

She first caught sight of the older man, single-barrel shotgun glowing a light-blue color, still trying to organize himself against this assault. Velvet extended her leg into the air, and swung it down in a fluid motion over the barrel of the weapon, sending it flying into the ground. Startled, the man raised his fists, desperatley trying to look through the sand for an enemy that he would not be able to see until it was too late, a panicked expression over him. As her foot touched the ground underneath her, Velvet spun on her heels, rearing her fist back, palm open.

With precision that she had honed for the months and years that preceded that day, Velvet practiced a level of restraint as she slammed the lower-end of her palm into the face of the unsuspecting foe. As he was sent flying back, into the farthest wooden pole that held up the canopy and causing its structural compromise, she heard the distinct noise that let Velvet know Kandase had dispatched her enemy in a single blow. She looked over, startled to see that the other guard was nowhere to be seen, only Kandase inspecting her fingernails, her hip bent.

"Kandase, where's-"

"Give it a sec." Was all that Velvet got for a reply. As she stood in baffled silence, looking on at Kandase, she could hear a scream of terror from above. As she began to look up, she could hear Kandase count. "3,2,1..." She held out her arms in a cupped gesture.

Velvet looked back to Kandase as her opponent flew down from the air, directly into Kandase's arms. A look of desperation on her face, the girl, who looked to be the same age as Kandase. "Hi!" She said with a beaming grin. "Nice of you to...drop in!" Before the woman could respond or react in any way, Kandase removed her arm from around the legs of the guard. Just as her legs began to descend, Kandase, with the precision and speed of a bolt of lightning, reared her fist back and slammed the tanned, blonde woman face-first into the dirt below. "Kandase!" Velvet said, shocked at what she was certain was a murder being committed.

Kandase chuckled, waving her hand to Velvet as if to brush off her shock. "Take it easy. Her Aura wasn't completely depleted. At least I don't think so, anyway. Either way, you can clearly see that she's still breathing, living to be a thorn in our side for another day." Another chuckle, bending down to turn the woman's body over. "See? Her lungs are still moving. No external wounds to speak of. All that she's gonna wake up with is a gnarly headache and the memory of the time she thought she could put a gun in this member of the Bellerini clan's face."

Velvet apologized for doubting her friend, which was again met with a wave of the hand. "No worries, V. I get your whole noble thing you've got going on."

Shortly after, the two helped each other remove the tarp from the contents of the canopy, digging through the contents to see whether or not there was a piece of equipment or information that would allow them to progress in their investigation. Kandase and Velvet took to opposite sides of the area, scouring the contents that had once inhabited the three now-overturned steel tables within the area under the canopy. "A nasty infection just waiting to happen." Kandase said as she ran one of her index fingers lightly across the rusted edges of the nearest table. Velvet remained silent, eyeing the array of seemingly random objects on the ground before her.

Velvet crouched, rubbing her chin as she moved away things that seemed unimportant to her in hopes of uncovering something that was. Among the equipment that was strewn across the ground by the overturning of the table, Velvet pushed aside several wrenches, screwdrivers and hammers that had slowly begun their process of oxidation, looking for anything that jumped out at her as something of use. There, under said tools, was a small, metallic, cylindrical machine, that appeared to have a rubber base. It was as long as her hand, as wide as a can of soda.

She picked it up in her hands, turning it over to see if there were any engravings on its otherwise smooth surface. All that her eyes were able to make out were a serial number and a single word: Cell. With this small bit of information, Velvet deduced that the device in her hands was some sort of power cell. She stood, and turned it over in her hands again, looking for an indicator of what type of Dust was used by the small piece of equipment in her hands. To her surprise, there was nothing to speak of, nor a place with which any Dust crystals could be inserted, as was the norm with any kind of fuel cells that Velvet was accustomed to ("If you don't know how to work a vehicle, then you're as good as dead out there on your own. It's as essential a skill as learning how to split a Grimm in two." Dorian had said on one occasion in which she had decided to lay upon Velvet all of her and Qrow's collective knowledge of both land and sea vehicles.)

Curious, and filled with the drive to find the means by which this apparatus operated, Velvet crouched once more, rummaging through the seemingly unimportant tools and mechanisms. When it seemed that there was nothing that would help her quench her thirst for knowledge, a small black item that had been flung far from the other equipment that it had once shared the table with, a meter away. Velvet moved before her mind had a chance to command her body to rise, nearly stumbling to the dirt. Her hands caught herself, sliding along the surface of Remnant.

Velvet looked back, relieved to see that Kandase had failed to take note of her small moment of user-error. She turned again to face the black apparatus which was lying by itself on the ground. It appeared to be a port mechanism, similar to one that a being would use to plug a battery into for charging. It was a square, black box, with a large circular depression in the center, corresponding to the shape and dimensions of the power cell that she held in her hand. There was a small switch over the front of the box, labeled 'Test' over it with black marker and masking tape.

Well, that's self-explanatory. Velvet inserted the power cell into the box, hearing a click just prior to the action. She flipped the small switch, eyeing intently for some sort of reaction. After several seconds, the apparatus, and the battery, began to spark and smoke in her hands.

In a panic, she looked around for the least occupied area, realized that there was an abundance of such areas, and hurled it as far as her arm would allow her (which ended up being around 30 Meters). She observed with a small shudder as the mechanisms exploded, sending a small trail of black smoke up into the air in the distance. Velvet let out a sigh of relief, partially that her own need for information hadn't gotten Kandase and herself killed as well as the fact that the damage was far away from them.

The sound of Kandase's voice from behind her broke her attention from her folly, giving her reason to turn her attention to her companion who had since found a beaten-up scroll. Velvet looked over her shoulder at the trail of smoke once more, then walked over the small area to her friend.

'Why do they have a Scroll?" She thought aloud, pointing a crooked finger at the seemingly useless device. "I thought the loss of the CCT made them obsolete?" Velvet heard the sound of dirt being moved and the patter of footsteps nearby, but she dismissed it as that of small animals, and focused on Kandase again.

"Well. That is usually the case, but they don't need the CCT to record video and physically drop it off." She said with a shake of the head.

"What would they have to record?" Velvet asked, the hesitation causing her voice to shake. She still wasn't entirely sure what the limits of her capabilities were, and she was almost certain that she didn't want to, even if she needed to.

"I don't know yet. I wanted to watch it with you." She pressed the button at the bottom of the Scroll, then extended it. The screen, to her own surprise, powered on, giving way to the last file that was opened: as Kandase predicted, it was a video file. The two eyed each other, wariness evident in both of them, then Kandase moved her finger over the icon of the file, clicking on it to trigger the playback. Another shuffle, and Velvet ignored again.

The scene opened to a darkened room, black walls with red borders along the edges of the wall. It was an immediate red flag to Velvet that the video had something to do with Ratel. Two of Ratel's gang members, or two people dressing in the same colors and style of dress, dragged a shivering boy and girl who looked no older than those one may see in combat school, 12 or 13. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and dried tears were overshadowed by the fresh-flowing. Small bits of mucus were flecked against the bottoms of their noses. They attempted to look at each other, but were shoved straight by the two ambiguous guards behind them. Both were tanned, the one on the right donning a ponytail with a distinct scar over their face similar to Kandase's. Both donned red bandannas to conceal the lower portion of their faces, and black sunglasses to hide the rest of their distinctive features.

They held the two students, gripping their shoulders tight with black leather gloves. In between them emerged, from behind, Honey Ratel. She placed an arm on the nearest shoulder of both of her subordinates, cocking her head and smirking into the camera. "Hello, wonderful and slightly-subhuman people of Remnant. Who I am..." She paused, taking a deep breath as if reveling in the fame that the video and its contents would bring her. "Will be made known to you soon enough. I am here for one purpose, and I am going to show you, through the conduits of these two willing subjects." She paused, nodding to each of her members and placing a syringe that was filled with a black substance in each of their now-outturned hands. "This is the future, the way to peace. It is a surefire way of bringing about the end of all conflict amongst man and Grimm. 'How', you may be asking? 'How can two kids, who don't even look like they're out of combat school, be able to end all war?' Well, ladies and gents, this is how."

"No. She wouldn't be that bold-would she?" Kandase said, rubbing her chin with her free hand. It took all of Velvet's willpower to not beg her to stop the video. She bit her tongue, and allowed the playback to continue.

Another nod from Ratel, and a nod in reply from her subordinates. In unison, they injected the strange serum into each of the students, eliciting pained cries from the ones being injected. They called out the name of each other, falling into deep convulsions. As per the orders that Ratel gave during this period, the two members refused to allow the two to fall to the floor, keeping them in camera shot. The convulsing was soon paired with black boils that protruded from the skin of the students at an alarming rate. When the boils burst, they spread along the skin to pave the way for more boils to endure the same fate. The two test subjects' heads hung low, as they had become unconcious as a result from the painful procedure. Ratel eyed them eagerly, turning her head to face both of them. After several more seconds, their bodies went limp, and Ratel's smile disappeared.

Their faces began to contort, noses expanding to resemble that of dogs. What was left of their human skin was covered by a fleet of black veins that flowed from the top of their heads down to the tips of their fingers and toes. The smile on Ratel's face returned, and the gang-members turned away with expressions of disgust. The two test subjects looked to each other once more, speaking in nothing more except low growls. "Interesting. They've managed to inherit the pack mentality from the Beowolves. Interesting." Ratel muttered. They raised their heads, giving way to the sight of the two having developed solid black scleras, their retinas white. They had sets of teeth, razor-sharp, that popped out from their black lips.

A pair of thin white stripes had been formed, the color similar to that on a Grimm mask, with red borders, stretching from the ends of where their eyebrows once were, stretching along to the ends of their new snouts. Their lips quivered, slowly curling back into snarls as their growls became more present. The two looked over their shoulders at the gang member who was holding onto their mutated friend opposite themselves. The two gang members had since straightened their gaze, not looking down to see the sets of black claws slowly sliding out of each of the test subject's 10 fingertips. Without notice, they spun around. As they reared back to strike, the video went black, the only thing filling the void being a curled, circular arrow.

"I don't believe it. She's actually going to try doing it." Velvet said, taking a step back from Kandase, putting a hand over her mouth and looking at the surrounding area, as if it would somehow erase what she had just seen. She turned her gaze back to Kandase, who shared a similar expression. "Kandase. I know what we saw about The Parthenon, but..." Velvet paused, impossible to come to terms with the fact that she would be able to make such an impossible decision. Kandase must have understood as well, for she put up a hand, silencing Velvet.

"I understand. After what we just saw, this definitely takes precedence. Velvet-" Kandase swallowed a lump in her throat before continuing. "You don't think his sister was the girl in the video, do you?"

Velvet had not given such a thought ample time in her mind, and it was not one that she was prepared to entertain. "No. I don't think so."

"What makes you say that?" Kandase said, shaking her head and tilting it.

"I don't know. I just feel like Ratel would know, somehow, by now that his sister was related to one of the people in our group. If I was in her position, I would use the poor girl as a bargaining chip of some sort."

Kandase stayed quiet, running Velvet's words through her. "Yeah. It's not a perfect theory, but it's plausible enough. This Ratel chick isn't stupid. She's probably going to be looking for whatever advantage she can get to pull us out of her side."

Velvet nodded. She had thought the same thing, precisely. "Perhaps we're going to get a little lucky and be right about this."

Her ears registered the shuffling of dirt behind her, but before she could react, she was gripped from the back, a thick arm with white, wispy hairs wrapping around her throat. She gagged a small amount, but stopped when she activated her Aura to repel the attacker. As she heard Ceril from afar prepare to shoot Velvet's attacker, and watch as Kandase withdrew one of her regular throwing knives to hurl, Velvet sprang into action.

She slammed her heel into the toe of the older man's boot, thrust her elbow back into his hip area, flung her head back to connect with his nose, and leapt upward to gain the momentum to flip the stunned guard over her back and onto the ground in a single fluid stroke. Before the older man could attempt to regain his bearings and rise, Velvet slammed her heel into his chest, knocking the wind out of him and keeping him on the ground. She picked up on a small cough under the sound of Kandase's furious clapping and whooping.

"Whoa! That was sick, brutal, and totally amazing!" Velvet couldn't help but blush at the sound of one of her mentor's aplomb. "Now, I wonder. Who could have taught you something like that?" She asked to the general area rhetorically.

Velvet felt the urge to join in the fun that Kandase was having with herself, but she was brought back to the task at hand by the feeling of the older man rolling about under her foot. She pressed her heel down again to keep him docile, then leaned down. "Where was that video taken?" She asked sternly.

"Piss off." Velvet raised her heel, only to thrust it into his sternum once more, eliciting a pained groan.

"Try again." Velvet instructed.

"Alright. The truth is is that I don't know. Someone gave it to me, and I was instructed to go with Gina-my friend that you knocked out over there, to distribute it among the different news stations in the 4 Kingdoms. We were going to make copies of it."

Remembering the fuel cell that she had found earlier, Velvet was not entirely convinced that the man was being sincere. "You're lying." She said impulsively.

"You can't prove that, even if I was." He added.

"Start telling the truth. There's something that you're leaving out. What is it?"

"Uh, it was taken in Carat. That's all there is to know. Nothing else, honest." He smiled a panicked grin up at Velvet, revealing a mouth with a blackened tongue and several missing teeth, with several more capped with gold casings.

"The fuel cell!" Velvet shouted, her patience running thin. "Where does the fuel cell fit in?"

"Um, fuel cell? What are you talking abou-?"

"Start talking, or my friend with the knives gets a turn."

His face went blank, and his eyes looked hesitantly to Kandase, who had since taken to mimicking the running the blade's edge of the knife she had produced along her tongue. Velvet felt a small amount of satisfaction as he breathed in a gasp of shock. "Okay! it was a prototype. We're using something like that to power our cars, so we can run operations more smoothly when we branch out into the other Kingdoms. We were going to sell it, as well, to the producer of that serum. That's all I know."

Still unsatisfied, Velvet leaned against the leg that was on top of the older man, applying more pressure. He gasped for air, giving Velvet reason to relieve the pressure a small amount. In her mind, it was her mercy that separated herself from her enemies. Without it, Velvet knew that there would be no point in standing between them and the innocent people of Remnant. "Who is making the serum?"

As she had expected, the older man gave a response of ignorance. "I don't know. I don't know!" He glanced over to Kandase, who had begun strolling in a casual, but slow manner, over to them. Velvet, under her heel, could feel the beginnings of hyperventilation, and could hear the sounds of dry sobs coming from his lips. "Some guy in Atlas or something! That's a rumor that I heard! I'm just the middle-man. No! Less than that! I'm a grunt! I don't know anything!"

This time, Velvet was certain that the man, under the pressures of human nature and self-preservation, had given all that he was able to. She nodded to Kandase, who nodded in return, coming just close enough so that she was able to bend over and meet the gaze of the frightened gang member between them. "Aw. Guess we'll have to postpone our little play-date for another time. Until next time, Snookums!" She said with a bubbly lisp that conveyed the idea that Kandase was criminally insane. She reared her foot back and kicked the older man in the head, sending him into unconciousness. "It's better this way." She said to Velvet. "He seems the type who's able to take care of himself. As soon as the two of them wake up, the sun will have gone down, and they'll have the chance to get back out to wherever it is they came from. Sure, they'll just be thrown back into circulation, but we have the benefit of not getting crushed under the weight of their deaths."

"I concur. Kandase, we need to get to Carat as soon as possible. Who knows how much time we have before they try doing something like this again?"

"True enough. We need to get out of here. See if either of your friends know the way." They began walking, when Kandase stopped Velvet with the gripping of her shoulder. "Velvet. I don't think it needs to be said what liabilities we can put on the other two if we tell them about what we saw just now."

Although she wasn't comfortable with lying again, Velvet was fully aware of the repercussions should it be revealed to either Dew or Ceril what was being done to people. Such information had disgusted even Kandase, someone who had seen the worst of humanity. Velvet did not wish to fathom what psychological damage such a revelation as genetic experiments and the deformed creatures that came out of them would have upon her new friends. For the time being, she, too felt it best to allow them the blessing of ignorance. "I feel the same way. If at all possible, I'd like to avoid such pain and turmoil upon them for as long as possible."

"Right." Kandase said. "And who knows, V. We might just do so good a job that they never even have to know about the horrible things that Ratel is doing. That is our job, after all. To save lives, and protect the public from all the scary things in the world. This is what we were trained for."

Velvet couldn't put her finger on the reason why, but Kandase's words did not make her feel the weight of their mistrusts and of the task at hand any less. She recalled her father once saying that things always had to get worse in order to get better.

I hope your words don't hit their mark here, Father. Things don't always have to get worse, do they?

Although she told herself such things, Velvet's heart was locked in a different set of opinions, entirely. She kept these thoughts to herself, however, as her and Kandase both elected to construct a makeshift tent of three poles and the tarp for the unconcious gang members. "This way, they won't get a heatstroke out here in the bare sun." Velvet informed, with more aplomb from Kandase in the form of "Always Velvet with the heart of gold."

In that moment, Velvet was assured once more that, while things would most assuredly get bleak, and they were all due to witness horrible things along their journey, they would never be truly alone so long as they had the calming words of their past mentors and their friends at their sides. She assured herself that, no matter the storm, her and her friends would be able to ride it out, if not prevail over the rains themselves.

"Velvet. Are you alright?" Kandase asked, when Velvet realized that she had stopped in a trance-like state upon their walk back.

"Oh. Erm. Yeah." Velvet began to follow Kandase as she turned her back, feeling slightly embarrassed.

She eyed Ceril and Dew, who were looking at her with suspicious expressions. Velvet felt even more self-concious when she realized that her small trance had attracted such attention from all of her friends. Upon the ascent from the edge of the canyon rim, the two asked of her well-being as well. "Don't worry. I'm fine."

"Did you find anything that can help us down there? Was there anything that you found out about what they're doing with my sister?" Ceril asked, his eyes wide with both fear and anticipation.

Velvet felt the hair stand on the back of her neck. Despite what every fiber of her being told her, she knew that she could only do one thing that would keep the peace among the four of them.

"No. We didn't find anything down there, related to that."

"Oh. Well, that's a relief. You two will let us know if you find anything, right?"

Velvet and Kandase exchanged a glance with each other, pleading with their eyes to let the other one answer. "Of course." They said in near unison. Velvet shuddered, knowing well-enough how artificial that sounded. Dew and Kandase seemed to buy the response, however, and nodded, thanking the two of them.

"It's our pleasure. Don't forget that you two are just as much in this as we are. You're as vital as we are in the effort." To Velvet, she sounded like one of the people that could be found in a recruitment video for one of the four combat academies within the Kingdoms.

"Wow. You sound like one of those goons who's trying to get us to join up for the military or the police force or something." Dew observed, no sign of humor in her voice. Kandase pursed her lips, but said nothing in response.

"Anyway. We're not the most essential part of the team. We're all needed, for the unit. Don't forget that. Now, it's hot as crap out here, so why don't we get back to Charlotte and see if we can't find Carat." Kandase said, crossing her arms. Dew scoffed, and smirked at Ceril.

"We can't take you to Carat." She said dryly.

"And why not?"

"Because there isn't a Carat anymore."