Chapter 42
Blake rocked back against the couch she'd been thrown into. Weiss stood over her with an outstretched hand and a malevolent look. They were tucked away neatly in the corner, and there wasn't as much privacy as Weiss would have liked, but she saw little alternative, with how adept Blake had proven to be at avoiding her.
"Ok, Blake, do you want us to end up like that?" Weiss whispered, looking discretely over at where Ren sat over a deliriously mumbling Nora, wetting her forehead with a towel. Well… either she was deliriously mumbling or talking normally - it was hard to tell when it came to Nora.
Blake only shook her head in the negative.
"Then start talking!" Weiss said. "Why did you run away two nights ago?"
Blake looked down through the corner of her eye.
"Are you not going to tell me?" Weiss leant imposingly over the sitting girl. "Is this something you plan to keep a secret forever?"
Blake still didn't look up from the tiling. "No," she said crisply, "I don't want to hide anything from you."
"Then speak up! Why did you run away!? Was it because of Adam?"
"No!" Blake said. "It didn't have anything to do with Adam!"
"Then who!" Weiss demanded
"Me!" Blake answered finally, drawing in at herself with a pained expression and clutching at the front of her shirt. "It's because of me!" she looked up with tear filled eyes, shaking with the effort it took to admit the words.
Weiss reared back up to a full stand, looking down at the crying girl with genuine confusion. "What do you mean?"
"When Adam attacked you, in the office…" Blake silenced again, assaulted by impetuity.
"Yes?" Weiss crouched low, phrasing her words with more kindness, now. "It wasn't your fault that he attacked us, Blake. I've told you-"
"No!" Blake looked away now. "It's not that!"
"What is it, then?" Weiss asked, taking Blake by the hands.
"I-"
"Yes?" Weiss asked, forgetting herself in the excitement.
"I was there!" Blake admitted at last, tearing the words from herself with painful effort.
Weiss was confused. "Ok?" she said.
"I was looking through the doors when he was threatening you!" Blake said. "I… I ran away Weiss. I was scared and I ran away!"
"You found Winter and told her where we were!" Weiss denied. "That was the smart thing to do!"
"But-!" Blake interrupted herself, thinking over Weiss's words. "You knew I was the one who called Winter!?"
"...yes?'" Weiss answered. "Winter is my sister, you know. She tells me these things."
"Yeah, even I knew, to be honest," Ruby said from where she'd been hiding behind the couch.
"Ruby!" Weiss said, a sudden anger pitching in her voice.
"What?" Ruby asked.
"How long have you been back there?"
"Just for the entire conversation!" Ruby placated.
"What have I told you about eavesdropping!?"
"But I didn't want to be left out!"
Weiss, in anticipation of the statement, had already started rubbing the space between her eyes. "Ruby?" she said.
"Yes?"
"What did I tell you about eavesdropping?" Weiss repeated patiently
"Not to do it?" Ruby answered.
"Then why were you?"
"Uh…" Ruby looked to either side. "Well, really, I think we should be focusing more on Blake, to be honest," she turned suddenly to look at the sitting faunus. "She really needs to stop blaming herself, right Weiss?"
Weiss, despite seeing the tactic perfectly, tumbled over with the slight encouragement and forgot all about Ruby as she turned her attention back to Blake.
"Right, you," she pointed at Blake, all business, "stop blaming yourself this instant."
Blake only looked confused. She shut her eyes and focused very hard for a moment.
"I said stop blaming yourself already!" Weiss said, impatient.
"I'm trying!" Blake said, feeling guilty at how she'd failed Weiss with her inability.
It was at that point that Mr. S came in through the door, which had been blasted open courtesy of Schwarz.
Behind him, a line of technicians in white lab coats followed, carting along various gleaming blocks of technical equipment. And behind them, the robotic whirrs of Dr. Polendina's chair could be heard.
"What are you doing here!" Weiss glared at Mr. S, who was walking at the head, smiling.
"Well, it's a rather long story," Mr. S said, moving to stand beside where Penny's body had been left in the center of the room, "but I think this might be able to resurrect Penny," he said, holding up a short bar of metal.
Mr. S had missed completely the ensuing tantrum by Pyrrha, having left the room before Penny arrived in it.
He wandered the halls contemplatively, not going in any particular direction and eventually coming to a set of stairs.
By the time he'd reached the second level, he'd again gained access to a wall of windows that looked down into the inner garden; Pyrrha was sulking there alone, half hidden in shadows, and spinning her tiara in the air before her, making it fly around in gentle, hypnotic motions.
Schwarz strayed behind initially, eventually coming to her normal position beside him, once she'd confirmed to herself that the recent compromises hadn't bothered him too much, and that indeed he seemed to be thinking deeply about some other matter. Schwarz, as was customary, only reached the position in order to silently inform the man of her willingness to listen. And, a far cry from his initial reluctance to engage with her, Mr. S now seemed comfortable speaking his most personal thoughts to Schwarz. It was strange, how great of an impression she had made on him in so little time, that he was now so comfortable with the prospect.
"Is there really so little hope for the girl?" Mr. S asked, lifting a hand to his chin, using the new term he'd taken to using when referring to Penny. No longer was she a "robot" in his mind, but rather a "girl". He was invested in her case, and for a moment forgot his own troubles. It was as if he felt guilty for dismissing her death as unimportant earlier, and somehow wished to make up for his unintentionally callous thoughts.
"I'm afraid not, sir;" Schwarz answered him. "Any attempt to salvage her memory would react violently with the dust. The laws of nature are against us in this case."
Mr. S didn't bother to ask if the dust could be cleaned off, fully aware, now, of the strangely unlimited divisibility the substance seemed subject to, and of how notoriously difficult it was to clean off the small particulates of the matter without the use of some rather violent and corrosive medicines.
It was just at this moment that Pietro came into view in the far hall, the feet of his robotic carrier freshly wet with rain water and snowmelt - a testament to his rushed travels through Atlas to get here. He looked… not quite angry, not quite affronted, but rather worried in that strange way of a person who was looking after something hopeless.
"I take it you're here about Penny?" Mr. S asked.
"I was informed that her body had been taken from the workshop."
"It was us that removed it. We came across a potential solution, and circumstances didn't allow us to wait for your arrival, but I can't imagine that was too great a comfort to you," Mr. S said, looking with new empathy towards the man.
"You should know it's a hopeless case," Pietro said, strangely casual as they met in the middle.
"Ah, well, the fall maiden insisted we allow her mother a chance. It's hard to say no to that kind of insistence. I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all," Pietro said, sad, "it's not as if I have any important work left with her."
"What do you mean?"
"Atlas is commissioning another model, they're giving up on salvage efforts."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Mr. S said, and meant it.
"Don't be. It was my council that drove them to it."
Mr. S only shot a surprised look over at the man, before turning his attention back to the line of windows they were both now facing, watching his ghostly reflection floating against the background of the winter garden. Pietro's reflection, he could see, too, and the man seemed resigned, as if the tragedy haunting him had happened decades ago, and he was now only reminiscing.
And that reminiscence brought about a new courage in Mr. S, now that his thoughts had been turned in that direction.
Mr. S said, "why can Penny's memory not be revived?"
Mr. S was normally one who abhorred revealing his ignorance, especially when there were such deadly consequences for doing so too flagrantly under his current circumstances, but he felt the sudden urge to ask the question. He didn't know why, exactly; perhaps it was intellectual curiosity that drove him; but he was left feeling more confused, rather than less, when the question left his lips.
Pietro looked over at him with his own sense of confusion. "Lightning dust is volatile when exposed to a density of field-noms greater than-"
"Why?" Mr. S asked, unfamiliar with the terminology, but getting the feeling that he was onto something. "Why should trying to read the information from a magnetic hard-disk cause such a violent reaction?"
"I'm not sure I understand you," Pietro said, knowing that Mr. Schnee knew too much about dust to be asking about elementary reaction mechanics.
"Why should a reader head cause such a violent reaction in dust?" Mr. S asked again, unceasing as he turned a hard look onto the man.
"Because the lightning dust crystal in the reader head would, when powered, engage in an uncontrolled reaction with the lightning dust that spilled over the memory disk," Pietro said, reciting the elementary mechanics as if he were reading out of a textbook, and looking very confused for it.
"Why?"
"Why, because E-Type lightning dust and M-Type lightning dust are incompatible. They react violently when introduced to each other with enough power. And the scanner head requires power to work. Not to mention that the memory disk, while unpowered, will not react well to such a chain reaction."
"So, both the reader head and the hard disk are made up of lightning dust?" Mr. S asked.
"Yes."
"Then, how did they function without violently interacting?"
"Because both the memory disk and the scanner are both made out of M-Type lightning dust," Pietro said, adding a slight hint of corrective terminology into his explanation.
M-type lightning dust, Mr. S knew, was that type of lightning dust which had been found to have - or been induced into having - magnetic properties. And it had some quite amazing magnetic properties, as the records showed. Mr. S still didn't quite believe in the claims of arbitrarily programmable, point-like, monopoles he'd read about.
"So, if I understand it correctly, some Type-E dust from Penny's power cells leaked onto the M-Type hard disk, and this is the cause of the danger?"
"No, the hard disk is inert when read from. It has no chance of reacting with the volatiles. The cause of the danger is the scanner - it requires power to read the hard disk, and once it receives enough input power, it will by necessity drive a nu-field down into the memory disk. This will cause an explosive reaction with the E-Type dust that's spilled over the memory disk." Doctor Polendina explained, sounding sick at having to repeat the diagnostic that had been haunting his mind for the past several months.
Mr. S, however, was thinking some rather more hopeful thoughts. "Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, "but, as I understand it, what you're saying is that: if there were some way to create a reader head without using lightning dust, we wouldn't have to worry about anything? Since we could then create a magnetic field without also driving a nu-field into the E-Type dust?"
"I'm not sure what the point of this philosophizing is, Mr. Schnee," Pietro said. At this point, he was having trouble concealing his distaste for the man. He had never held any love for Mr. Schnee, and the fact that he'd been forced into working as a personal lackey for the mogul was always a matter of great distaste to Pietro. Not to mention, the recent news of his flagrant crimes did little to assuage the doctor of his ambivalence.
Mr. S didn't respond for the longest time, deep in thought.
His intelligence wasn't challenged by the solution to everybody's problems. He was familiar enough with magnetic reader-heads from earth. Merely, he was struggling with how he might present said solution in a natural seeming fashion. Mr. Schnee was not known for being an expert on hard drives, after all - much less alien hard drives that ran on principles apparently foreign to remnant.
At last, his impatience with indecision flared up, and he threw himself into action. Mr. S wasn't sure, even as he spoke the words, how they would be recieved- but he knew it wouldn't help to wait, if it was suspicious now, it would be suspicious six months from now.
"Dr. Polendina," Mr. S said, looking to the man and failing to hide his half-giddy smile, "are you aware of the phenomenon: whereby ordinary metals can be magnetized, if you run a current through them?"
At first, Dr. Polendina was more than hesitant. He'd thrown in his way every obstacle and common sense proclamation against the notion.
He'd first admitted that, of course, he knew of the phenomenon. That it was an idle curiosity for hobbyists, and not up to the task of real industry.
But then Mr. S challenged him: they needed results, and non-dust magnetics looked as if they could provide it.
Polendina denied it: it wasn't fit for purpose, he said.
Mr. S countered the increasingly ill fraught denials. The purpose they needed here was something that could create a magnetic field without also creating a nu-field - this seems like the purpose most suited to it.
All of these were met with more skepticism. Months of work by the worlds greatest experts had proven it conclusively, Penny's disk data was trapped, irrevocable, gone... Polendina was nearly certain of his conviction.
But Mr. S had not one doubt of his. He was bolstered with the surety of someone who knew his idea would work before he'd even begun it - someone who'd seen it working, thousands of times before, in every computer he'd seen over the course of his life. And he wasn't about to allow Polendina to reject the offer, considering the great risk Mr. S had undertaken to reveal it to him. But, despite this, Mr. S was held back all the time from defending it to the fullest of his ability. He knew all the answers to Polendina's rash denials, yet he had to force himself to contain his feelings, to withhold the more certain defenses, and base his argument entirely around theoretical vagaries and other baseless conjectures. They weren't bad arguments despite this, but they were lacking in certainty, they were the arguments an armature might make when dreaming about subjects beyond his comprehension.
Polendina, however, was an expert in his field; and, armed with such a toolkit as he was, Mr. S was ill equipped to combat him on any fair level, even if he did have the facts on his side.
"Non dust magnetics can not read the disk with a high enough fidelity. You may be right that, theoretically, they can measure changes in magnetic field orientation, and, yes, if were trying to read off of a drum head, this might be useful, but nano-scale data storage in Atlas's most advanced architecture to date is something that's rather a bit too sophisticated for such primitive tools." Doctor Polendina denied resoundingly. He spoke still in that warm, fatherly voice that had come to characterize him in Mr. S's eyes. It seemed he was incapable from breaking from it, even when speaking in the rough tones of someone who was tired of being reminded. And, still, he held in his voice a hint of... condescension, at the ignoramus who had proposed such a preposterous idea.
Mr. S, much like Polendina, was a proud man, at the top of his field, and used to the high regard afforded to him by his colleagues. And he was also a content man, with very few quibbles about his life and chosen profession. Among those few things that angered him, were condescension, gate keeping, and people who thought they knew better than him. And, though Polendina perhaps had reasonable cause for assuming those things, Mr. S still did not like the sting of rejection; he couldn't stand to be faced with it, after all that he'd risked so much to help the man! And now it was all going to come to nothing because-
And at this point, Dr. Polendina spoke, breaking his concentration. "Perhaps you ought to stick to your financials, Mr. Schnee," the doctor said sternly. "They seem an environment more suited to your particular talents."
Mr. S snapped.
And he unloaded everything onto the handicapped man, just barely keeping himself from yelling: "take a seat and learn!" during his hurried and haphazardly detailed run down on exactly why Dr. Polendina had no idea what he was talking about.
GMR reader head technology had been all the craze when Mr. S was taken off Earth. Well, it was the craze amongst the very few people that cared about information storage technology, and who even knew about the obscure projects that had been undertaken to create it. So, perhaps it would have been more accurate to say it was all the craze amongst Mr. S and his friends.
But, the fact that Mr. S had friends who had insider knowledge on the technology development was quite helpful to him, for he'd, at their behest, done some reading (just before he was taken off Earth, in fact) about AMR, GMR, Hard Disks and the various differences and interactions inherent within.
Of course, the dry technical manuals that had been tossed his way by his friends interested him very little at the time. Mr. S quickly saw through their transparent attempts to distract him from his depression by asking him to "help" them read through the shiny, proprietary documents they were showering him with; but he had little else to do, and obliged them.
So it was that Mr. S came to learn, in quite great detail, about a variety of eclectic topics, including the specifics of magnetic reader-heads.
And he did not hold back when telling Polendina all about it.
He had to watch himself with the vocabulary, and he had to remember to use some quite untechnical terms, but that came as little hindrance to his speech rate, which ran unabated as he lectured, in verse, to Polendina, exactly how a non-dust Magnetic reader head could work.
He told him all about thin films, and the magnetoresistive effect, and even the air-bearing that would allow for a close read, and all of it in no particular order, jumping from one topic to another at random, and even retreading over his older points moments after he'd presented them.
This haphazard presentation format was to his advantage, in that it made his outburst seem more spontaneous, if less coherent. And it had, at least, managed to shock Pietro into listening to and, finally, it seemed, into understanding the heart of the issue that Mr. S was getting at.
And, with this understanding, Dr. Polendina actually managed to present an obstacle that was actually a hindrance.
"But… sir," he said, a sudden newfound respect in his voice, "even if it would work as you say, the hard disk doesn't actually contain Penny's memories."
"Then what is it holding?"
"It's holding the access key to unlocking penny's current memory state. Her true memories are stored in the neuro computer, they're integrated into the operator," Polendina said, tapping his head as a visual gesture.
"Then we'll use the hard disk to access it. What's the issue?"
Pietro leaned his elbows on his knees, and blew out a tired breath. He paused there in silence for a long moment. "I… believe your idea will work," he said at last, adding. "I just never feared I'd actually get this far."
"What's the issue?" Mr. S stepped back from the window, turning slightly to face the man.
Polendina sat back up, looking at Mr. S. "The issue is that penny's repair is impossible for another reason. I… even with the hard disk, I only ever tackled that… I don't know why. But even if, in my wildest dreams, I'd managed to get the access code, I always knew Penny was beyond salvage. I just carried on for no reason I suppose. I guessed I'd never get the access code and that would be that."
"Why is her repair impossible?" Mr. S's eyes hardened.
"Because we'd need to read from and modify her neuro computer externally once we get the access code. That requires deep scanning MRIs, and there's no non-dust magnet in the world powerful enough to manage the task." Polendina almost looked apologetic, as if sorry to have wasted Mr. S's time and gotten his hopes up.
And Mr. S, too, looked sorry. A reader head was one thing, a functional MRI was quite another. Even if he knew where to start it would take years, maybe even decades before he'd be able to get-
Wait a minute…
Mr. S looked back through the window.
"What is it?" Polendina asked, captured by the sudden rapt attention Mr. S seemed to be focusing on the garden grounds below.
"You said there wasn't a non-dust magnet in the entire world powerful enough to function as an MRI," Mr. S said.
"Not just that, but the precise control you'd need over the magnetic field-"
Mr. S held his hand up, interrupting the man without looking away from the window.
"I think…" he said, turning his hand to point at the figure sitting in the sleet, "that I've just found your magnet."
In the path of Mr. S's finger, Pyrrha sat atop the base of the marble column, oblivious to the sudden attention, as she hovered her tiara over snow like an aircraft.
"Pyrrha, get in here!" Schwarz shouted, leaning out from the open window, and causing Pyrrha to break her stupor. "We're going to read from Penny's memory disk, and we need your help!"
Mr. S had gotten everything ready in record time. And even he was amazed at the speed with which he'd been able to do so.
He'd gone personally to the R&D room, while Pietro readied the test objects.
The Schnee Manor R&D room was perhaps one of the best stocked and best staffed in the world. Not a single piece of equipment, no matter how obscure, was missing from the collection.
But, of course, everyone there just wanted the super computer and 3D printer, and the line to get time on it could often be measured in days.
Mr. S, of course, got quite the boss tax, and rapidly found himself at the front of the line.
"I need the computer," he walked in through the doors with the order, Schwarz following close behind him, working in a flurry to send orders through her tablet. "Shut off the simulation," he said, walking to the pair of tired technicians that were sitting in front of the computer terminal.
"But we're almost done!" one of them protested, turning back to look at him with dark bags under her green eyes.
Schwarz didn't hesitate to push the two women away, setting them rolling to the either side on their lab chairs. She leant over the terminal, halting the current simulation with a few precise taps of the keyboard, pausing the successful cure for cancer that was currently loading in the super computer.
The green eyed technician looked like she wanted to say some very harsh words to the woman, but quickly lost the nerve once she compared their respective builds.
Meanwhile, all across the manor, a dozen engineers of the relevant type were awakened by the urgent response tone on their scrolls, rubbing the sleep from their eyes to see, posted on their scroll screens, a summons to Research and Development.
Once there, Mr. S quickly gave them the rundown.
And, he was almost disappointed on how routinely they'd managed to create the first functional prototype.
First, the technicians who they'd found hogging time at the super computer were, under the supervision of Schwarz, instructed to create an airflow model for the air bearing, as well as a magneto resistive model for the reader head.
Most of the simulation was dictated rather than created. Mainly it involved the use of stock software, mixed with various pre-existing materials models, and simulated under the auspices of a surprisingly sophisticated A.I. system.
Within minutes they had a working model.
Then came the prototype creation. And again Mr. S was amazed at the superb metallurgy that allowed for such instantaneous results. Various, strange alloys, created by mixing metal with earth dust, were manipulated like a sketch into the right shapes and properties.
And, several minutes after the first model, the first batch of reader heads were cooling on a rack. It was at this time that Pietro came through, carrying on his chair a tray of hard disks, carrying test data and covered, experimentally, with E-Type dust.
By the time they'd confirmed the absolute success of the system, the computer had already made several improvements to the original design, and was already in the process of printing them out.
Mr. S held Polendina back from going to Penny with the results just yet. He was more aware of the limitations of the technology than anyone, and the reader-head worried him. There was nothing faulty with it, of course, but he couldn't help but feeling nervous. You see, while a dust scanner could read a memory disk from across a crowded bar; the design Mr. S had furnished needed to be, oh, about several nano meters above the hard disk. This wasn't a main issue, creating the disk holder that could accommodate that had been no issue, and the air bearings would work well to keep it stabilized.
But… Mr. S wanted to be extra sure that the reader head wouldn't suddenly fail and accidentally touch the rapidly spinning hard disk. If that happened, then what the manuals called a "catastrophic hard crash" would result, and Mr. S would be - what the manuals called - "fucked."
So, Mr. S waited for the improved designs to print, and even modified them to run the reader head higher than would have been optimal. For, while the simplified reader head was comparatively under-powered, when compared to Earth's designs, the dust memory disk was so excellent at holding discrete packets, it made up for the quality difference.
And so Mr. S held them back, until they tested, and retested, and modeled and tested again the new reader heads.
At last, he was convinced to leave, and the cancer researchers were left to return to their work… just as the next group of people with scheduled time on the supercomputer arrived to take their turn.
Mr. S left happy, though, with a functional reader-head in his hand.
And it was this reader-head that he carried into the room, holding it in his hand, as he stood beside Penny's bassinet.
Beside him stood the disk carrier. Penny's chest had already been opened up, courtesy again of Schwarz, and her hard disk had been placed neatly into the carrier.
Pyrrha stood on stand by. She hovered two magnetized blocks of metal inside a coil of metal wire, spinning them rapidly and generating a steady stream of electricity that didn't have even a trace of nu-field going through it. It was an extravagant measure, but none were willing to allow even the slightest risk.
And all that remained now was for Mr. S to attach the reader-head to the disk carrier, and he wasn't doing it.
Everyone, gathered now around the bed, looked up from Penny to stare at Mr. S's frozen hand.
"Maybe we should test it again," Mr. S suggested, looking over at Polendina for some assurance.
"We've tested it enough times!" Weiss said, expressing the frustration apparent in everyone in the room, as they'd been forced to sit through the dozens of extra tests at Mr. S's behest.
"Are you sure the test disks are an accurate model for Penny's?" Mr. S turned to Polendina, hoping for a delaying answer.
"The test disks are the same model as Penny's, they were created in the same batch specifically for her."
"But what if you accidentally picked up the wrong set!"
"I only have one set of discs in my office, and I checked the serial numbers otherwise."
"But-" Mr. S began, just when the avalanche of voices reached him.
"Just put in the scanner!" Weiss said.
"Even I know that this is going to work," Ruby raised her hands and flexed her eyebrows with expressive annoyance.
"Are you serious, father?" Winter expressed.
"Just do it already," that was Blake, speaking for the first time.
"Put it in! Put it in!" Nora chanted, still laying on the couch and high from her earlier treatment.
"Put it in! Put it in!" Pinkamena said, joining Nora and keeping a surprisingly good time.
"Bro, I am not going to sit through another test," Sky said, adjusting her aviators.
"My calculations say we have already reached twenty sigma of quality assurance," Twilight poured through the numbers, speaking the results loudly, even as she huddled closer to Schwarz to show her the work projected on the tablet.
"Dallying causes down-turned demeanors, darling," Beryl chanted the words in sing song, lifting a delicate hand like an instructive school teacher.
"Wot in inter-operation is causin' this dang delay," the feminine twang of Ochre said; she adjusted her hat - emerald eyes glaring below the brim with lighthearted frustration.
"Um… if it wouldn't be too much trouble, maybe you could put it in, if you felt up to it," Haetzen put her fingers together, hardly able to look Mr. S in the eye and turning away to hide behind her pink fall of hair.
Mr. S wasn't sure what she said, drowned out as it was in the overlapping cries of everyone else in the room, even several of the gathered servants in the distance, but he was sure he could guess the content.
"Ok, fine!" he acceded at last, and clicked the reader-head solidly into place.
And, with hardly a delay, the disk spun up with an electric whir.
Pyrrha sat meditatively in a near space, sitting some distance away from everyone else, and focusing intently on her task of spinning the magnetic blocks. Though a computerized system was moderating her output, ensuring an even power flow to the reader head, she still insisted on trying to limit major deviations, and Mr. S had to respect her dedication. Although, he couldn't help but feel that the distance everyone else was keeping from her had to do with more than a desire not to disturb her focus.
Shaking his head, Mr. S took his eyes off of Pyrrha and, following everyone else's lead, focused on the display screen with the loading bar.
Currently, the loading bar was at two percent, and it was ticking up nicely every several seconds.
Everyone's eyes, save Pyrrha's, and Ren's, were trained greedily onto its progress.
Mr. S stood with calcified muscles, looking at the bar with baited breath. Weiss stood in the back with Blake, Ruby paced nervously in front of them, turning an occasional glance over to the screen. Schwarz, Twilight and Beryl stood like a troika of sentinels, expressing little, yet unable to avert their eyes from the monumental progress of the loading screen. Pinkamena sat with folded legs on the ground next to Nora's couch, hands wrapped around her crossed feet and leaning forward as she looked upon the scene with child-like interest. Nora sat above her, as if suddenly returning to her senses, looking confused but somehow still understanding the important atmosphere that had taken the space.
And Penny lay still before all of them, her burnt visage a ghastly reminder of what was at stake.
Then the loading bar jumped suddenly up to forty-five percent, and Ruby jumped in shock at the development, and everyone else barely held back from doing the same.
And then, several uneventful minutes passed and then it jumped again! This time, to fifty five percent, barely holding there for several seconds before it jumped again! And again! In quick succession; it reached the ninety percent mark!
And then came the steady march up to ninety-nine percent.
And then, once it reached ninety nine-percent, it stayed there, for two hours.
Nora had fallen asleep at this point, and Pinkamena lay on her back, hands folded across her belly and legs kicking with boredom.
Ren sat stoically beside her, watching over Nora, not once having taken his attention from the girl during the entire ordeal and occasionally replacing the wet towel on her head with a fresh one.
Ruby looked to be on the verge of sleeping, head lolling at tired intervals, and having to force herself back awake every so often.
Weiss and Blake sat stiffly next to each other; Blake appreciating the enforced silence more than her counterpart, despite the nervous jingles that affected her just as much as everyone else, as the suddenly heavy air only seemed to grow heavier with time.
Most of the servants had lost interest long ago, and those that remained did so in service of their ordinary duties.
And Jaune just sat at the far desk - his hands clasped together over the desk top, and his eyes shut tightly in great focus - as his lips mumbled silent prayers. Though normally embarrassed of his religiosity, Jaune had easily abandoned his reservations for this occasion, as sudden hope carried him to plead - in his meditative entreaties - that god bless this download.
And, who knows, because, just then, the loading bar hit one hundred percent, and the "loading complete" jingle played over the speakers.
Almost all turned to the scene.
Save Nora, who's fluttering lids were still closed in peaceful sleep, and Pyrrha, who still focused with great severity on the important task set before her - all were entranced by the celebratory jingle, and the satisfyingly complete loading bar that ran across the screen.
All hearts seemed aligned as they lifted with the image, and they all rose in a sudden cheer, running over to heap congratulations onto a very embarrassed Dr. Polendina.
"She's saved! She's saved!" Ruby cheered, skipping like a flower girl, and leaving behind a trail of rose petals to mark her path. "You saved her!" she chanted, gesturing over to a stunned Polendina, who's stuttering attempts to correct her were drowned out in the wash of everyone else's cheers.
Weiss and Blake hugged with sudden emotion, temporarily forgetting their previous worries. "Thank you!" they both said with sudden emotion at the man, "you've no idea how much good you've done for us!" Weiss finished.
Ruby suddenly stopped next to Jaune with a puff of Rose petals, shaking the focused boy out of his prayer. "Jaune! Wake up! Penny's saved!"
Jaune shook his head, blinking his eyes open as he processed the news.
Once the words had hit home, Jaune's eyes flashed with glorious understanding.
"Thank the lord!" Jaune shouted, jumping up and raising his hands with reverential spirit.
"Yeah, you're welcome!" Mr. S snapped, slightly miffed at the lack of credit he seemed to be getting.
None heard him over the general jubilation, however. And by the time things had quieted enough for Dr. Polendina to get a word in, Mr. S had already cooled down, and was there at his side just in time to stop him.
"Well," Dr. Polendina began, "it was really Mister Schn-"
"Actually," Mr. S interrupted the man with a hand on his shoulder, and took him aside for a moment, moving him so that they stood in privacy next to Schwarz. "Let's keep quiet about my contribution to this, ok?"
"But… but why?" Dr. Polendina asked.
"Would anyone really believe you?" Mr. S asked in answer.
Dr. Polendina seemed perturbed in thought, but at last came to the stern conclusion: "If I told them they would," he answered.
'Well, I can't have anyone getting suspicious about me this soon,' Mr. S thought, and said:
"Well, maybe, but some people still wouldn't. They'd think I was paying you to lie so as to make myself seem better… needless to say, that wouldn't be good for either of our reputations. So, let's keep this as our little secret," Mr. S patted the man's shoulder for good measure, sure that he wouldn't be likely to betray him on this, considering the recent favors. "Just tell the R&D teams it was your design."
"Well, if you're certain that's what you want," Polendina agreed, with not too little discomfort about the prospect, and not even pretending to understand the logic.
"I'm certain," Mr. S smiled, and walked away from the man. Schwarz followed, hardly questioning Mr. S's decision, much to his surprise. He'd have to come up with a backstory as to why Mr. Schnee knew so much at some point. That point, however, was far distant, because, as all the kids hugged and jumped behind him, Mr. S suddenly recalled the treacherous woman still trapped in his basement, as well as the one week time limit he'd been given to solve the entire situation.
Well, at least he'd done one good thing before he died.
He turned to look back at the celebrating crowd, and he couldn't help but notice that Pyrrha was missing, an empty spot of ground marking her previous position next to the generator.
"Schwarz, where's Pyrrha?"
"She's gone to the detainment district," Schwarz said, knowing the answer even before she looked through the camera footage on her tablet to confirm. "She's requesting to see her mother."
The detainment district was a single block of armored metal, and the interior showed this with panache. The walls all gleamed with stainless finish, and the only break from the sea of metal came in the form of the energy fields that bridged the cell openings.
"I'm sorry, mother," Pyrrha said, sitting on the bench that ran along the wall just outside of Thetis's cell.
Thetis sat stiffly in a comfortable looking chair - one that she'd turned to face away from the cell opening, so that Pyrrha only saw the woman's dark ponytail hanging from the back of her head.
"I shouldn't have said those things to you," Pyrrha continued. "They were untrue and wrong and I never meant them, even when…"
"Even as you said them?" Thetis asked, her voice under perfect control and showing no emotion.
"I… I'm sorry," Pyrrha said again.
"And what is it you want, this time?" Thetis asked, a cynical hook in her voice.
Pyrrha winced. She'd hardly hated herself more than at this very moment. She wished, more than anything, that she could have said "nothing" to her mother; she almost even considered lying, and saying just that: but… Mr. Schnee had been the one who showed her the precise number of coils to make in the generator, and she suspected he had more than a small hand in the development of the new scanner - not to mention, it was by his effort they'd even been allowed to see Penny in the first place...
"Penny's not dead, mother," Pyrrha settled at last, gripping her hands and looking down at them with intense focus. "She… they've figured out a way they might be able to bring her back. They just succeeded in transferring her access codes."
"Oh, that is surprising," Thetis said boredly, still stiffly facing the far wall. "You shouldn't believe everything that Jacques tells you, dear. It'll only end in disappointment."
"No, but they really did do it! I saw them do it! Doctor Polendina was there to oversee it!"
"How did they manage to read anything off that memory disk?" Thetis pronounced, flagrantly dismissive of the idea.
"They made a new scanner," Pyrrha answered, happy to distract herself with small talk. "It doesn't use dust. They just magnetized the metal with electricity."
"Hmm," Thetis hmmd with slight disapproval. "They should have called me in, if they were going to do that."
"Yes, I suppose so," Pyrrha laughed, encouraged somewhat, by the slight aliveness that had taken her Mother's voice.
Thetis was silent.
And Pyrrha was once again faced with the discomfort of her request.
"Well?" Thetis said at last, "out with it. I don't have all day, you know."
"I want you to let Robyn ask you, mother."
Pyrrha gestured her left arm to Robyn Hill, who sat hunched on a distant bench, looking up at them from where she'd been staring intently at the floor, trying to give the pair some semblance of privacy.
Mister Schnee and Schwarz had spent the past twelve hours intermittently talking with Thetis, trying to convince her to take a truth examination. Thetis had adamantly refused, and Robyn hadn't been too enthusiastic about the whole ordeal, either, requiring some very heavy handed tactics by Schwarz to even come to the Schnee Manor in the first place.
"No." Thetis answered her, still in that perfect calm. "I won't allow that woman to, as you say, 'ask' anything of me."
"But mother, I know you're innocent, so why won't you-"
"If you know I'm innocent, then you shouldn't need her verification," Thetis countered.
"But not everyone knows that!" Pyrrha denied, standing up and cutting through the air with an arm. "Not everyone knows you! Not like I do!"
"Everyone is on my side, Pyrrha. No one has any reason to believe Jacques' unreasonable claims, least of all you. Besides, I'll be out of here before the week is out, whether or not I agree to the interrogation."
"You can be out today if you just let Robyn ask you!" Pyrrha pleaded. She looked back to Robyn questioningly.
Robyn looked up at Pyrrha. "I'm not allowed to ask anything of her unless she agrees to it beforehand. Even if we did make contact, she could just refuse to answer."
"And I wouldn't answer," Thetis affirmed, nodding her head resolutely, her pony tail running across her back as she did so.
"But-"
"But why are you so invested all of a sudden?" Thetis asked, sounding somehow colder at the prospect.
"I just don't want you to have to say here any longer;" Pyrrha could feel her guts churning as she lied.
And she didn't feel any better when Mr. S walked in, trailed by Schwarz.
"Pyrrha," Mr. S acknowledged with a nod, knowing from the security footage what Pyrrha had been attempting.
"Mr. Schnee," Pyrrha said, with forced coldness.
"And you're here, too," Thetis said, sounding sick. "If you're going to ask me again to subject myself to an interrogation, then I should let you know that better people than you have failed."
"Mother," Pyrrha's voice softened as she pleaded with Thetis again, "all of this suspicion-"
"Could have been averted if Jacques wasn't such a paranoid nutcase," Thetis answered. "I have no desire or reason to play along with his head games. I will leave here because I have done nothing wrong - not because I have bowed to enough of Jacques' whims to get his pass of approval."
"Thetis," Mr. S said, voice stern as he turned it onto her. "The security footage shows an entire hallway's surveillance shutting down simultaneously for an entire minute. The regeneration systems were blocked. Even the warning systems had been interfered with. Can you think of any other person who could have done such a thing?"
"I don't know," Thetis answered. "Maybe the devil did it."
"Mother, this is serious. I know you didn't do it. But as long as you refuse to answer, you're only introducing more confusion!" Pyrrha implored Thetis with renewed passion, forgetting her earlier, forced coldness.
"Let there be confusion," Thetis said. "As long as you know the truth, Pyrrha, why should you care whether the likes of Schnee refuse to believe it?"
Pyrrha took on a sudden heat to her voice, "because lives are at risk! And he needs to know, if they're going to get anywhere with this investigation!"
Thetis stood up suddenly, turning to face Pyrrha. She flicked her hand as she did so, sending the chair flying to the side, and letting it shatter against the armored wall of her sell in an explosion of shattered wood.
Pyrrha was surprised by the sudden motion. She was more surprised to see the gresh tears that had welled up in her mothers eyes, as well as the dried tear stains that marred her cheeks. Thetis had been crying for several hours. She'd been crying over the course of their entire conversation. Pyrrha winced at the observation - remembering the potent words she'd said to the woman not hours ago.
"Oh," Thetis's voice shook violently, a mixture of matronly strength and impotent anger as she breathed heavily in forced attempts to keep her tears from reaching her voice. "I knew I'd been losing you, Pyrrha. But I never imagined you'd come to this…"
"Mother-"
"Oh, don't call me that!" Thetis snarled. "You've only ever called me that when you needed something from me! Only when you wanted something! Why don't you call me as you really think of me: a selfish, bitter old woman who can't care about anyone but herself! Does that ring any bells!"
"I never meant that!" Pyrrha was on the verge of her own tears, now.
"And, oh, yes, that's just what you say! Once I've outlived my usefulness you run away! When I fail you even once, you betray me like this!" Thetis whipped a hand out at Mr. S, who reared back from the sudden attention.
"I didn't-"
"Oh, I imagine he's the one who fixed Penny, isn't he?" Thetis huffed a deep breath at the mixed emotions of shame and anger and unbridled hatred. "Is that why you've chosen his side, now? Was I such a fool to think you would stay loyal to me!?"
"This isn't about sides! I've always thought of you!" Pyrrha said, fitting her words in between Thetis's next.
"Are you even my Pyrrha anymore!" Thetis accused, just barely keeping her composure as she looked at the strange girl in front of her. Who's ruddy brown hair and teal-blue eyes never seemed to occur to her as anyone she could ever have known. "Do you even feel anything for me anymore? Have you ever?" Thetis stood tall and with a wide stance, seeming unperturbed by the streaming tears that ran down her expressive face.
"I'm just trying to make everything right!" Pyrrha yelled, louder than she'd ever spoken before, trying to regain something from the sudden loss of control she felt.
Thetis paused, eyes flashing rapidly from Pyrrha to Mr. S, a wide, innocent look to them, as if she were a child discovering something horrible for the first time.
"You… you really have gone over to his side, haven't you?" she spoke softer now, raising an arm and backing away, as if distancing herself from some rabid animal.
"I haven't!" Pyrrha denied.
"I've been rotting here in a holding cell, and the first person you think to protect is Jacques?" she said the words sadly and with disbelief, never having imagined that her earlier, emotional accusations could have carried even a grain of truth. "Have I really been so cruel to you, Pyrrha?"
"This isn't about your enmities!" Pyrrha said, supported by her own anger, now. "I want you to get out of here, too!" Pyrrha drew closer until she was leaning on the glowing screen, as if to make up for Thetis's retreat. "I care about you!"
"This was because I couldn't fix Penny, wasn't it?" Thetis seemed to be talking to herself, now. Repeating her earlier words as if having run out of new ways to express them. "This was because he got you what you wanted, isn't it?"
"Mother-"
"Isn't it!?" Thetis yelled, demanding the answer.
Pyrrha only lifted another hand to the screen, leaning her head against it.
"Pyrrha," Thetis said, walking up to the screen suddenly. "Pyrrha," she called again, drawing the girl's eyes up to her.
Pyrrha was shocked into silence, frozen in place when she saw her Mother's eyes.
Because, in Thetis's eyes, Pyrrha saw... boundless love... and caring. It was just like she'd remembered in her dreams, and such a drastic change from the tortured accusations that hounded them not moments ago.
"Mother," Pyrrha whispered.
Thetis looked directly into Pyrrha's eyes, losing none of the love in her own, and yet burdened by great anxiety and depression as she did so.
"I …" Thetis began, "If you ask it of me, I will allow Robyn to question me," she said. "If you ask me to, I will allow her to question me."
Pyrrha, however, felt herself numbing at the offer. She was terrified by the implications. Because, when she looked into Thetis's eyes, she saw nothing but fearful uncertainty.
Thetis wasn't making the offer to help Jaques. She was making the offer to find out, for herself, where Pyrrha's heart truly lay.
Her earlier, emotional accusations, Pyrrha could bear, because she knew them to be untrue. And Thetis, too, knew this even as she accused Pyrrha - that she had been carried away by her recent pains.
This… test, however, told Pyrrha that Thetis felt some actual, true uncertainty in her heart about the regard in which her own daughter held her.
If Pyrrha asked Thetis to go through with the test for Mr. Schnee's sake, Thetis would take that as evidence that Pyrrha despised her, and Pyrrha would never be able to convince her mother otherwise. Pyrrha knew this as she looked into her mother's eyes.
And Pyrrha knew that, no matter her intentions, no matter her true feelings, that she wouldn't be able to avoid bringing that pain upon her mother. She had already brought Thetis to tears, and she was now asking herself whether she was willing to hurt her mother in this way… whether she 'despised' her mother enough, that she would allow their relationship to disintegrate in order to get the information for Mr. Schnee.
Pyrrha knew that her mother was innocent. She also knew she wouldn't be able to convince Mr. Schnee of that fact.
The only way to convince Mr. Schnee and Schwarz, and to set them on a more correct path - one that could possibly avert something more drastic - would be to ask her mother to prove her innocence to them.
To ask Thetis to go through with this. To ask the proud matron to comply with Mr. Schnee: the person who had illegally jailed her, and attacked her servants, and visited a thousand other slights upon her… Theris was a woman of her word, and she would comply with the request, but that request would be the last thing Thetis ever allowed Pyrrha to say to her.
And the question in Thetis's eyes, "do you despise me" seemed to justify itself now.
To ask her mother to do such a thing: it would mean that Pyrrha didn't care about whether her mother stayed in her life or not. Or, rather, that she cared about other things more.
Pyrrha was angry at her mother, now, for having forced the conundrum.
Her mother, if she just hadn't been so stubborn, if she just hadn't been so unwilling to compromise, if she hadn't been so proud, she wouldn't threaten to end their relationship just because of a request! And Pyrrha wouldn't now be forced to choose between her relationship with her mother and…
What was she getting out of this, in exchange for such a thing?
Pyrrha closed her eyes and searched within herself. She… no longer felt angry at her mother for being so unreasonable.
Pyrrha understood, now, just what she'd done to Thetis to bring her to this. She'd run away from her, she'd merged with Amber without telling her, she'd called her to the Schnee Manor and gotten her arrested, humiliated her, cursed her with insults she would be ashamed to throw on her enemies…
She had only herself to blame, Pyrrha believed, that things had come to such an extreme as this. And Pyrrha was now forced to choose between her Mothers' companionship and… what was it she was getting in exchange? Pyrrha asked herself. Would she lose her mother in order to gain Mr. Schnee's favor?
No. The answer came to Pyrrha, as clear as any answer ever had, since Penny's death.
Would she lose her mother in order to help save the life of the man who'd saved Penny?
No. Again the answer came just as clearly, if with more effort.
But… Pyrrha was a huntress. And she'd only just started feeling that way again, now that the news of Penny's future revival breathed life into her. And, as a huntress, she remembered her first convictions. That she'd, promised, sworn to herself, that she would be willing to sacrifice, just to earn the title to herself. She'd promised that she'd help make the better world, that she would smile in the face of even the greatest adversity.
She'd failed in that last goal as of late.
But, would she be willing to sacrifice everything she and her mother had together? Everything they'd built between each other over eighteen years, to save the life of one stranger? One who had been an enemy of her mother's since the beginning? She didn't care about what favors Mr. Schnee may or may not have done, so what was he to her except another person among millions?
But… Pyrrha could help him… she was perhaps the only person in a position to help him.
But, how would she help him, really? All Pyrrha would accomplish with such a sacrifice would be to, what… decrease the likelihood of his death by some nebulous amount? Lead him away from one of a thousand dangerous red-herrings?
No, even if Thetis continued to allow Mr. Schnee to fool himself, it was still likely that Mister Schnee would survive. There was no chance anyone could visit harm upon him, given the security of the castle.
Maybe, even if her mother said nothing, and Mr. Schnee continued following the false lead she represented... maybe he would still find the true culprit anyway? Maybe Pyrrha wouldn't need to help him?
But… she allowed herself to consider… if he, or anyone else, did die - if she was wrong, and the confusion caused Mr. Schnee and Schwarz to misstep, and somebody died... was that a risk she was willing to let others face because of her silence? To have another death on her conscience?
Would she even allow herself, through inaction, to contribute even one ten thousands of a part to the death of one person?
Pyrrha tried to console herself, that this would be her sacrifice alone to make, at least.
But, contrary to her earlier conviction, there was nothing in Pyrrha's eyes but sorrow when she forced herself to look into her mother's eyes and said:
"Mother, please allow Robyn to examine you."
