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The hexagonal ceiling and floor panels brought me back to the other laboratories. With lights in the center of the geometric shapes and the cool white walls, the place was clearly in my father's style. Tubes of purple fluid with Grimm suspended in it lined the long hallways. The monsters were on grotesque display and they appeared awake within the suspension and they struggled in my direction as I passed by them. The monsters were conscious in their tubes. Just as I had once been.

Again I felt something surreal looking at the pods from the outside. Flashes of gazing out through blue fluid with a naked form burned through my mind. I shattered the pods we passed and slew the restless monsters inside. Neo was ever silent beside me. Rosé took my allocution and remained by the entrance. My father would have a second means of escape. He did at the Atlas bunker and he was a slippery paranoid bastard.

The space opened up until we were walking along a catwalk in a wide open floor above a pit. Down in the pit were rows upon rows of tubes such that I couldn't see the bottom. It just faded out into a purple blur of darkness.

The ceiling opened up above us in a hexagonal sort of done shape with white lights protruding downwards. The catwalk split up. It met a four way crossroad in the middle of the room over the pit.

I leaned over the railway and gazed down at the spiraling columns of monsters. There were so many… did my father consider them successes or failures? What about the ones he had released? And in which of the three directions should I go? There were no signs to navigate by and even if there had been it would be impossible to know which direction my father was in. A camera on the ceiling swiveled down to look at us. Had I triggered a silent alarm with my presence? By its very nature I couldn't tell. The red light on the side of the camera flashed at me twice.

A voice echoed through speakers throughout the wide open room.

"So, my little failure, you survived…" the voice like gravel and it boomed something familiar in my ears. I had heard before as though in a deep and distant dream. It had resonated through my pod in a low muttering. I recalled it the way one recalls long forgotten memory or waking nightmare.

"Father. It is I," I spoke back addressing the little camera.

"You're a failure. Not my son despite the genes we share. Don't be deluded, little pet." The voice was distorted by the speakers but I heard it clearly enough.

"Do you know why I have come?"

"Of course I do. Your Mother sent you."

Neo gave a start of surprise and looked me up and down.

"You knew?" I asked. "You knew she'd want me to kill you? Why?"

"Knew?" There came a wild laugh that went on and on. "Did I know? Your 'mother's' influence has been within you since the start. Ever since I started growing you from a tiny baby. Hence your status as a failure. "

I was dumbfounded.

"What's the matter? Couldn't make me work anyways as you intended?" I wondered.

"Salem interfered in your experiment," I noted some bile in his voice. "She overwhelmed my own education program with something of her own and you ended up with a mix of both. You were too impure to go on with your original purpose. Surely you feel her influence on you."

"My original purpose? What was it?"

"Oh - why does it matter? You were tried and you failed and that's all there is to it. So if you weren't here on Salem's orders then why are you here, boy?"

"I'm here to kill you," I answered.

Peels of laughter rained down on me through speakers.

"To-to kill me? The only one who can tell you the truth? And you want to-want to kill me?" He kept interrupting himself with his own maniacal laughter.

"You think I'm lying?" I demanded.

More laughter rumbled through the building. I was putting my old man into hysterics. It was pissing me off.

"Answer me!" I demanded. I felt a stabbing pain in the chest from one thing or another. My inside guts hurt where they got all complicated and mixed up.

"You will watch your tone with me, boy. I owe you nothing. That's right. Nothing! Hahaha!" More laughter poured out by the bucketfuls.

"You're a mad man. You're just trying to mess with my head. I'm good at mind games now. You'll have to try harder than that."

"Boy, you don't want to start things with me. I'm beyond your reckoning. You would fall apart. Especially if you saw what I've been up to all these years. My prognosis is that you will die, pet."

"I have a name. You will use it! It's Cloud. I am Cloud!"

He fell into booming laughter like sandpaper.

Damnit. Damn him. How could he? My entire life became nothing more than a freak catastrophe. I was going to show him. I was going to torture him. I was going to give him over to Neo to play with like a cat and a ball of string. It was going to be delicious. He was just lying to mess with me. He had every reason to keep stalling. And I was playing right into it. I just needed to find him.

I went straight in the end. I wasn't sure where it led but I had to take a chance at the end of the day. Any one of these paths was as good as the others and I couldn't see very far because each path bent sharply after a few meters out of the big domed room.

Damn it all.

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I entered into a space with a computer console looking out at some empty glass pods. Except they weren't all empty. There was a red dog in one of the clear glass pods. It stared at me and I at it. There were more cameras in this room. One facing me and another in the wide open space with the pods.

It had a number tattooed on its face and one of its eyes was milky white with a scar over it. XIII, it read on the face and side of the animal. I stared at the computer console unsure. This was a dead end but I could leave this dog here if I killed Merlot. I may as well kill the poor animal myself.

The console that controlled the pods and room was locked and I didn't know Merlot's passwords. I took my sword and shattered the reinforced glass. I jumped over to the pod that contained the dog and I broke it to pieces.

The dog was wary of me and it growled. It had faced abuses in its time as a project of my father's, that was for certain. It would be mistrustful of any person in all likelihood. I stepped back and the creature jumped free of the pod.

"You want to help me find Merlot and kill him? Get revenge?" I asked the dog.

It said nothing because it was a dog but it looked about and jumped through the glass I had shattered and took off down the hallway the way I had come. I could feel that the animal was awakened with my sixth or seventh sense. It just buzzed in the air around the creature. It was probably some experiment on awakening the aura of animals for some sick purpose. I had no idea what for.

I took off after the animal. Neo was hot on my heels.

I followed it back to the domed room and it hung a left, claws skittering across the hexagonal floor panels. It led the way down a long corridor and there was a sealed room behind reinforced glass and lab equipment and computers. My father was on the far side.

The red furred dog scratched at the glass and left deep marks behind but it couldn't get through at my father who was typing away at a keyboard. Then he moved swiftly to another console and withdrew a pendrive for portable data storage. He was trying to make a run for it. I was sure. He tapped a button and metal shutters fell down and sealed my father in to the other room before I could shatter the glass and get to him.

I only had so much time. I saw stairs in the room my father's was in that led upward. That was probably his emergency exit. If I couldn't bust my way into the bunkered room and after him he would escape and I would lose him for sure. I couldn't go around and cut him off. Who knows where that emergency exit actually deposited you.

I activated my semblance and walked past the dog which had fallen back and growled at the metal shutters. I started swinging and denting the metal to tear my way inside. Neo could only sit back and watch as I leveraged my emense strength to try and pry a way through. I succeeded at getting through the metal Inna wide enough hole. Than I shattered the glass and stepped through. My father was gone. The stair way out and up was sealed by a giant vault door, the kind that rolled into place like a bank vault. No way could I rip through that.

All the computer screens were blank and devoid of all previous activity. The room was dreadfully empty and the dog whined behind me.

"Yeah. He's fucking gone. Gods damn it all."

Neo reached down and silently pet the dog once. It growled but let her touch it. It was wary of us and I was frankly wary of it. I suppose we could let it go wild and it would probably be fine. It had aura, after all. Neo walked up to me next. She stamped a foot at me.

"What?"

She didn't look impressed by that. She crossed her arms and pouted.

"Oh by the way. My Mother sort of also ordered me to come and kill him. I don't know why. I thought it was mind games."

She held out both hands for me like a child. Looking for a hug, I gave it to her. I embraced her warmly and felt her chilly aura against my skin and I wondered not for the first time what my aura tasted like. What was my consistency? I would never know, not for certain. Maybe I would ask Ruby and Weiss sometime.

I had something to write to them about what with that and Merlot's escape. I had been so close.

"Now, what to do about the dog."

Neo looked down at the animal. Then back up at me.

"I am partial to strays, being one myself… let's see what Rosé thinks about it. Come on, boy, you are a boy aren't you? You are. Yep. Come on. Let's got outside. I bet you haven't been outside in ages. You've been stuck in a pod. I know what that's like. Come on, boy," I spoke with affection and a touch of tenderness.

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Rosé was waiting patiently for us. Her hand was on the hilt of her sword and she stood ready and firm.

"And?" She asked impatiently. "What happened? Did you get him?"

"Nah he escaped. He got away from me. I'll have to track him down again."

The dog came up beside me and sniffed the pine fresh air.

It walked over and with all the modesty of a dog went to the bathroom on a shrub. Then it came up to Rosé.

"You found a dog?"

"It was an experiment inside. He was doing something to it. I couldn't just leave him in there."

"Are you going to keep it?"

She reached down and the dog let her scratch it's chin and neck and it leaned into her touch.

Neo looked up at me imploringly. She was asking the same question and I guess that I am the boss. Why am I always the boss? Why am I always taking on strays?

"I suppose I am. I'll have to train it and feed it and -"

"Name it!" Rosé exclaimed. "Sorry." She mutely and meekly apologized for interrupting in her excitement.

"That too…" I stared at the tattoo on the animal's face. "Red XIII," I decided. It was as good a name as any.

I reached down and pet the dog. I knew a little about hunting dogs and how useful they could be. This old boy looked like it had seen some battle. It would do fine. I was already training one thing. Why not two?

"Red XIII then. Come on boy," Rosé told the dog as we started to walk away from the laboratory and back towards town. I was wary of Grimm but we had already cut a path through them to get here so I was more relaxed than I had been on the other trip.

The dog followed us along panting. Just one more addition to my party I suppose. And as I said I was partial to strays and this one had been tortured by Merlot same as me. We had a lot in common, this dog and I. I couldn't just let it go. It needed my help. And I could easily help it. So I should. Ruby would approve. Just wait until they hear about this.

We entered town and shacked up at the hotel. They didn't say anything about the dog with me. Probably because I was six feet tall and had a sword as tall as I was. Where did the two hundred and fifty pound huntsman bring his dog? Where ever he wanted, apparently.

The dog curled up in the corner of my room while I climbed into bed. Merlot had escaped me but I did some good today. That counted for something in my books.

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-WG