Iris shifted uneasily in her seat as she listened to doctor Lilac read away the Foundation's manifesto to headmaster Ozpin, General Ironwood and the last lady, whose name was apparently Glynda Goodwitch. Well, it wasn't as much a 'manifesto' as it was a letter of greeting to the people of Vale, to the Headmaster and to the wider human population of Remnant, as well as a short explanation of what the Foundation did.
All three of their hosts seemed genuinely interested to hear the details, considering that, from what little they knew of Remnant, the Huntsman academies were pretty much the most important institutions in the Kingdoms. They did want details. And details, Emily Lilac gave, "... Our main objective, however, remains the security of mankind, containment of anomalous entities that have proven to be threats toward human life and to protect said human life, no matter the time, place, or dimension we find ourselves in," and she smiled at them, "If you have any questions?"
Ironwood raised a hand and she nodded, to which he inquired, "What kind of anomalies have you contained so far? Your organization's pretty old from what you've told us, so you must've discovered a lot of strange entities and items across time."
She smiled, then said, "Well, we do have a couple of anomalies present with us," which caused Iris to jump. Lilac looked to her and smiled, "Don't worry, miss Iris. And mister Han... You can come out from under by labcoat, now..." before looking back at herself. Iris paled, meanwhile, with Adams snorting amusedly behind her. It was just like Han to pull this kind of stuff.
"Damn," A disembodied voice spoke. Emily twitched as the creature fell out of the labcoat, speaking, "Just as I was getting comfortable..." and 'gazing' up at Ozpin and his allies. All three of them froze, with Glynda suddenly fainting, only to be caught by general Ironwood. Ozpin, meanwhile, stared at Han with the confusion you'd expect from someone who had not seen an actual living, breathing, separated limb. Especially not one that talked. Han waved with a thumb and said, "Good afternoon, folks."
"This is SCP twenty-nine thirteen. We call him Han, for short," Lilac smiled, hugging her tablet close to her body. She gauged their reactions and stifled her own desire to laugh as she saw Ironwood tending to Glynda, then clarified, "Don't worry. Han is considered a Safe-class SCP. He won't do any harm to anyone unless he really, really has to..." before looking to the hand.
"She's right," Han chuckled, despite the lack of mouth, face, or anything to emit the noises, "I'm as docile as a puppydog unless ya piss me off."
"... I see..." Ozpin blinked, then took his strange sunglasses off and wiped them with a handkerchief. Ironwood still stared at Han, stunned and trying to get Glynda to wake up. Ozpin, meanwhile, looked at Iris and asked, "What about miss Thompson...?"
"Oh," Lilac hummed, then chuckled, "Iris, why don't you show them?"
"Right... You sure, doc?" She asked, lifting her Polaroid, which shook the headmaster a bit. Lilac gave her a single, approving nod, before motioning to them. Iris shrugged, unsure, then said, "Okay then... Smile?" to Ozpin. The man did as asked, though it was an awkward smile, filled with the concern of any man who faced an anomalous entity for the first time. The girl clicked the button of the camera, the flash temporarily blinding Ozpin. It printed the Polaroid photograph from a slot in the bottom and Iris removed and shook the photo, before humming. She smiled awkwardly at Ozpin and said, "Sorry..." before pushing her hand through the image.
It materialized to Ozpin's right, surprising both him as it plucked his glasses. Iris pulled her hand back and lifted the glasses up, revealing that she had, in fact, teleported them from his location to where the Photo had been. She explained, "Hi. Name's Iris Thompson, I'm SCP-105 and I can create portals through the use of photographs. Case in point, me just yoinking your glasses, Headmaster."
"Incredible..." Ironwood murmured, gears already turning in his head, clearly. In a military sense, of course.
Iris leaned forward and handed Oz his glasses back, before stating, "Sorry, but I had to prove that this isn't just a fluke or fake..." and tilting her head to Emily, "Doc likes it when I test out my powers in the open, too, so blame it on her," and Lilac feigned being hurt by the comment in a melodramatic way that not even Adams could describe without chuckling.
Ozpin took his glasses with a nod, then slid them back onto his face, noting, "It is... Quite interesting to see what the Foundation deals with on a daily basis, but... Are you sure you are authorized to reveal this?" And looking at Lilac. She smiled and pulled out a document, sliding it toward the Headmaster and nodding. As he read through it, he had a moment of pause, then a sigh, "And you know some of this... How?"
"Lucky guess," Lilac smiled, "It is why we came to you. The Academy has some sway over the Council of yours, does it not?"
He nodded, "Yes..." before continuing to parse through the file in his hand. He sighed, rubbing his eyes, then stated, "We can aid with this matter, of course. If your diplomat seeks an immediate meeting to establish a permanent base of operations within Vale, that may take some haggling with the Council, however. They are quite the stuck-up bunch... Just for your information."
"Thank you, Headmaster," Emily nodded, "Oh, one more thing!"
"Yes?" He raised a brow, sparing a glance toward Ironwood as he helped Glynda wake up. The Headmaster was genuinely unsure of how to even approach someone like doctor Emily Lilac. A bubbly personality, combined with what seemed to be a hint of insanity based on the work that she and the Foundation seemingly do. He looked down at 'Han', blinked and rubbed his eyes to make sure he was not having a hallucination. Han gave him 'a nod', moving the extraneous bones attached to his wrist up and down, which caused him to have to take a moment. He then looked to Iris, who awkwardly waved, smiling at him, then pointing at the photo.
Doctor Lilac smiled, "We would like to remain in Beacon. Establish a small outpost here, too."
"Doc!?" Iris turned toward her. Adams flashed a grin as Iris turned toward her, before the girl looked back to the Doctor and partially begged, partially told her, "You sure that's a good idea?! Command just wanted us to make contact and establish diplomatic ties with Vale..." to which Emily simply smiled. She was the most rogue not-rogue asset and member the Foundation had.
And she always got away with the weirdest shit. Probably served her well to be under Bright's wing. Ozpin, however, seemed to mull the idea over as Glynda had finally woken up and was trying to pressure him not to accept it. He sighed, looked to Ironwood, then shrugged and said, "As a token of goodwill for the beginning of talks between the SCP Foundation and the Kingdom of Vale... You are welcome to a temporary stay within Beacon. Miss Goodwitch will find you a room..."
Glynda hunched over, arms limp beside her as she looked at her boss. He sighed, then asked, "Is that all, doctor?"
"Nope!" Emily beamed, "That'd be all! Thank you!"
Everyone else in the room blinked, stunned, by the simple joviality with which Emily packed her items, leaving the Foundation's introductory paper to the Headmasters. She showed Iris to stand up, still smiling, as miss Goodwitch walked past them, eyes still wide. The group walked to the elevator, with Glynda turning to the Headmaster. He sighed and mouthed an 'I'm sorry' to her before the elevator door closed. Glynda pinched the bridge of her nose and murmured, "Unbelievable..."
"So," Emily spoke, looking to Glynda, "What do you do around here, in Beacon?"
Glynda looked to her, then took off her own glasses and cleaned them while speaking, "We train the next generations of Huntsmen and Huntresses, the protectors of mankind... I figured you would know this already, seeing as you already knew a lot about our existence before coming in."
"We have had agents in Beacon for a little while, mostly working as cooks or chefs," Smiled the girl, "To understand the place we were making contact with better."
"We've only been around for less than a month, compared to the rest of the Site staff," Murmured Adams, crossing her arms to her chest as Han climbed onto her shoulder. She chuckled and bumped fists with the talking, moving hand, before leaning against the back of the elevator. Glynda looked back at the weird combo, watching as Iris seemed to be fiddling with her camera.
"... That explains some things about them, I guess," Glynda sighed, rubbing her face, "Alas. Yes, we are here to teach future warriors to fight against the Grimm, the monsters you have presumably encountered already beyond the safety of Vale's walls," and she put her glasses back on just as the elevator's ping echoed, signaling their arrival to the bottom floor.
"Nice," Adams noted, grinning, "You need a Drill Sergeant?"
"Hm?" Glynda raised a brow.
"We're still a secret organization, ma'am," Adams quipped, "If we're gonna be staying in Beacon for the time being, we're gonna need some form of cover story. Like the boys, who are bodyguards and cooks. I wanna be the kids' DI. Y'know, the one training them in hand-to-hand, prepping them in case some humanoid enemy decides to mess with them instead of your standard punching ba-... Err... Grimm."
Glynda furrowed her brows at that, then sighed and said, "I'll discuss it with the Headmaster."
"Thanks, Prof," Adams nodded, then looked to Iris and said, "Iris could be a student," which seemed to surprise the young one.
"She requires a team," Glynda sighed, "And I'm not sure allowing mister... Han..." She paused, looking at the creature on Adams's shoulder with a hint of concern, "Would... Fit... Can he hide? He may cause a panic in students if they see an unexplained severed hand on someone's shoulder, miss Adams," and, without a second thought, Han disappeared by hiding in Iris's hoodie this time.
Iris looked at the pocket Han had hidden himself in and warned, "Grope me and I throw you to the wolves."
"Don't worry, Iris. I ain't that kinda guy... Jeez, thought you'd know me by now."
She chuckled, "Fair enough..." then hummed as they approached a new building. What resembled a small cottage or house. Glynda handed them a key, while Iris stood there, stunned at their new accommodation. Doctor Lilac thanked miss Goodwitch with a smile, which allowed the woman to leave and, presumably, gather her wits while the girls explored their new place.
Emily opened the door with the keys, then stepped inside first. She let out a whistle, then said, "My, my!" as the girls entered. It was a massive place, a two-story house with two bedrooms up top and two more on the bottom floor, an open kitchen with an island in the middle and a surprisingly large room. Adams grinned, looking around at the spacious house.
"I call dibs on the top left dorm," The good Agent quipped, hefting her bag off her shoulder and walking up the stairs.
"I'll go let our friends in the MTF know that we have established contact and have a currently-temporary base of operations within Beacon," Lilac added, setting her bags on the island and grabbing her tablet, "I'll also be writing a report to the Director of Site-R001 and to the O5s! We have our first success planetside!" and smiled at Iris and Adams before she departed.
"Doc Lilac's really going all out, huh?" Quipped Han, poking out from Iris's hoodie.
"It's her first on-site Operation that didn't involve shadowing Bright or any of our other doctors, like Buck..." Adams replied to Han as she pulled their guns and extra equipment, including laptops, out of the bags. She looked around for outlets and found them, then noted, "Ah, shit, we're gonna need adapters..." as she took a knee beside the kitchen counter, "... Can't even tell what kind of socket this is."
"It's got four connection points," Iris blinked, "Weird."
"Yeah..." Adams nodded, then sighed and stood up, "Eh, whatever. We'll get Crow to make us some when he swings around."
"Yup," Iris quipped, then looked around and smiled, "Wow... I haven't seen a house since..." and her smile immediately faded. Adams sighed as she watched the girl seemed to have a flashback. She approached her and clapped a hand on her shoulder, which surprised Iris. The woman offered reassurance in the form of a small smile and a squeeze of her shoulder, before walking forward with her own laptop. She sat herself down on the couch, then put it on the coffee table and opened it.
"It'll be fine, Iris," Han quipped, "Gonna really be like a sort of summer camp, I guess?"
Iris chuckled, "A summer camp for the weird, huh?"
"Ain't summer camps usually weird?" He asked, "I dunno, I've only watched Sleepaway Camp..."
Iris rolled her eyes, smiled at Han, then stepped into the kitchen. She opened the fridge, to find that there was actually food left in the place. She blinked, took the note from the side and read it aloud after seeing an SCP seal on it, "'We figured they'd give you girls a nifty local house, so we yoinked some of the ingredients in the cafeteria. Don't worry, the place is stocked.-Agent Denning'."
Adams snorted, "Denning. Fucking nutjob."
"Well," Iris hummed and plucked up a large ham, noting, "We won't have to worry about grocery shopping for a while," and setting the ham back down into the packed fridge. She closed the door, turned and walked toward the couch as well, before sitting herself down and grabbing what looked to be a remote from the table. Putting her legs up onto the table, she pressed a button on the remote, looking around in confusion. Before long, a light flashed and, ahead, a holographic screen materialized from a relatively-large emitter on the furniture. Iris smiled, then said, "Wow! Holographics!"
"Fun," Anders chuckled as she kept tapping away on her laptop. Iris switched between channels while Han went on to explore the place, with the trio of Alpha-9 members seemingly getting acclimatized to their new place rather quickly. Iris enjoyed the spaciousness and some of the new items the had, while Adams simply enjoyed the peace this place provided. Well, peace until she got to work her DI magic.
Iris tilted her head left and right as she watched some sort of TV Cartoon show that was being played on Remnant, before checking her camera really quickly. She hummed, popped open the film storage spot and made sure that she still had the necessary paper for the cam to work, closed it, then set it on the table. Meanwhile, Han was exploring around the place.
"Did you call your room yet, Iris?" Quipped Adams, not even looking away from what seemed to be a two-dimensional, pixel-art videogame like one would see back in the '90s and early 2000s.
"Nope. We just got here and the Doc's absent," Iris replied as she started flicking between channels again. Adams snorted, then shook her head as she wrote up the details. Iris raised a brow and asked, "What? Doesn't seem too fair to me to keep the doc out of it..." before turning back to the TV. She looked at the table in front of them, at her boots, then removed them from her feet.
Adams wrinkled her nose. She cupped it between her index and thumb and shut her nostrils, before saying, "Holy shit, Iris, how long have you been wearing those things?"
Iris seemed confused, then looked at her feet. She got them off the table and the scent immediately assaulted her nostrils. She gagged, then responded weakly, "Since we got here... How did they get so bad...?" before looking for the bathroom, "I'm gonna go take a shower and burn these!" to which Adams chuckled, her voice a bit more nasal. Han gagged as well, then skittered away from the boots, while Iris dashed off toward one of the bedrooms and called out, "FOUND A BATHROOM! EXCUSE ME!"
"Heh, noted, Iris..." Adams replied, then sighed as she closed her laptop before it ran out of power. She hummed, then started checking her kit once more. Pistol and rifle, both. She racked the bolt of the SA58, a really modernized FN FAL, then removed the magazine and dropped the bullet in the chamber before slotting it into the mag. She also checked Iris's MP5, humming. She spoke to herself, "Really should've gotten you a VECTOR in .45 ACP... For the Grimm things, at least," before removing the mag from it, setting it aside and, yet again, pulling on the bolt and removing the round in the chamber.
She set both weapons on safe, then stood up and walked with them and their other bags of kit to set them aside, somewhere. Specifically, in a storage closet set off to the side, right in front of the other bottom-floor bedroom and fairly close to the door. She removed her chest rig as well, setting it and the ammo inside it there, but grabbing her IFAK. That thing could always come in hand, she thought as she put it into the kitchen island's top-most left drawer. She heard the running water of the shower start and chuckled as she figured it might've taken Iris a bit to strip every ounce of kit from herself, rig included.
She heard the door open, then turned to see doctor Lilac stepping in, tablet slung under her arm and smiling. The female SCP Foundation researcher said, "Good news is we are actively allowed to stay within the confines of Beacon! The MTF will also be at our disposal, should we require it. Urban Brawl operatives will remain within Beacon to provide on-the-spot reinforcement should we need it."
"Good to know," Adams nodded. She jabbed a thumb back toward the bottom-left dorm and said, "Iris found her room. She's also taking a shower."
"Understandable," Emily nodded, seemingly ecstatic, "I have also met miss Goodwitch along the way. She has provided us with extra communication devices that can directly link to this planet's variation of the internet. Add to that, command is presumably preparing to provide us a direct network from Site-R001 and we have our communications squared away!"
"Perfect. That's all there is to it, then," Adams noted, then crossed her arms and said, "Say, doc..."
"Mm?" Emily raised a brow as she set her tablet onto the coffee table in the living room.
"Was the whole 'outpost in Beacon' thing a situation the O5s requested, or was it your idea to give Iris some form of a break from all the shit back home?" She inquired as she checked her suit's systems via a specialized tool. The good doctor had been brought up to speed, too, about the situation regarding the Chaos Insurgency getting far bolder with their attacks. To the point several MTFs served as QRFs for various important sites that contained dangerous anomalies.
Emily tapped her tablet to turn it off, then replied calmly, "I merely decided I would require a proficient escort to bring me over to Vale, agent Adams... As for the situation brewing back home, the Insurgency will be dealt with as it has been so far. The O5s are no longer as worried about the Insurgency or its double agents, as they are working on developing counters to their infiltrators... But until then, we would have had to stay vigilant back at base."
"And being in Beacon gives us a nice little break from all that," Adams suggested, to which Emily smiled. The Agent then inquired, "What if they appear?"
"We will deal with them..." Emily replied, retrieving her own handgun from her bag and setting it on the table, "With extreme prejudice..." and that got a genuine, mad smile out of Adams. One of the reasons doctor Lilac was so liked by Bright was because she wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty during containment ops. It was also one of the reasons Clef and Light had allowed her to take Alpha-9 along. And why they'd also be coming by to visit from time to time.
Andrea let her smile tell the doctor all she needed to know as far as a response went. Emily chuckled, then turned and said, "I have already requested adapters for the sockets. I'm not sure how much sense they make relating to electronics or physics, really, but I'm not willing to question this world's anomalous properties until we've had a good study session and examined everything."
"That's fair enough, doc," Adams commented, then stretched and asked, "What're you planning on us doing while we're in Beacon?"
"Studying, attending classes... Teaching, in your case?" She smiled as she saw Adams nearly trip over herself at the mention of the former two. Emily took off her glasses, then set them aside to clean them and continued, "Iris has never gotten to see a high school, nor a university, has she? She has never managed to... Enjoy the stupid dreams of a teenage girl. Have proper friends..."
Adams nodded, "Foundation caught her. Even if we didn't, she'd have gone to jail for a crime she didn't commit..."
Lilac sighed, "Some times, life is unfair..."
And then she smiled at Adams, "For which reason, I am giving Iris the chance to live at least through college. Beacon is an institution designed to teach youth more than just fighting the Grimm. I've looked into it on a short detour to their library. They teach physics, biology, the usage of the local energy source, 'Dust', and so much else. All for the sake of serving as soldiers, but with the option to proceed into a civilian life should they wish..." and she winced, then murmured to herself, "Despite it not being advertised as such. Seriously, some of the books here put what I have had to use at Harvard to shame..."
"Neat," Adams noted, then heard the door open. She watched Iris come out of the bedroom, smiling. The girl had two towels, both blue, wrapped around herself. One served as a wrapping for her hair, while the other covered her otherwise naked frame. She crossed her arms to her chest and waved to Emily, who waved back, before Adams noted, "... Did we forget to bring our changes of clothes, Iris?"
"Nope. Heard doctor Lilac come in and I wanted to greet her is all," The girl replied, "I may actually go explore after I dress up, if that's alright with you two."
"Just fine by us, Iris," Lilac commented as she sat herself down on the couch, "We have agents everywhere, so it should be safe enough to walk out and meet the locals. The students seem like interesting people..."
"Agreed," The girl nodded, then excused herself to go change. Adams chuckled, then pinched her brow in disbelief at what was currently happening.
This was going to be an interesting mission.