Chapter 44
This chapter has been edited with the help of boothnat. I can safely say, she's amazing, has made this chapter a thousand times better.
So, it's safe to say, considering my words and the fact that I asked them to edit it, that I vouch for their writing ability. With that said, here is her story: The Traveler's Guide to Teyvat: How to not kill people - Chapter 1 - boothnat - 原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game) [Archive of Our Own], as well as her AO3 page: boothnat | Archive of Our Own
The Manor was locked down while Schwarz and Mr. S continued their investigation.
Guards watched every entrance and exit, keeping an eye on the scattered and quarantined populace of the Schnee household.
And even the Guards were being watched over, by none other than Mr. Schnee's personal security team, who were ever vigilant in their patrol of the gardens and of the space-time continuum surrounding the castle. After all- even the guards, some of them, were suspects.
Invisible glyphs set trip wires across every guard patrol path, emotions everywhere were monitored for signs of treachery by Haetzen, and an indistinguishable flicker gave away Pinkamena, whenever she fell into one of her more obstinate moods.
Ha! Who watches the watchmen? Just hire women, dumb-ass!
Mr. S and Schwarz sat in a dark room, in the midst of an investigative huddle; steam billowed from the two cups before them, obscuring slightly the footage they studied of the preceding theatre production.
After the play had ended, the audience was allowed to disband, the actors were paid and told to leave, and the remaining scripts were thrown into a fire-place. And, in the rest of the castle, outside of their investigative huddle… life went on.
Lock-down drills were a familiar- if irregular- event, after all, and as far as most of the castle staff were concerned, this was- just as Schwarz had declared in her announcement over the telecom system- just that: a drill.
And it was here, in the midst of this huddle, that Mr. S grew to appreciate his circumstances a bit better, and to feel thankful- because, while Hamlet had only one suspect to observe, Mr. S, had a hundred eyes, which showed, again and again, in every spectra and view, the perspective of the line of cameras they'd installed along the crossover.
Even the chairs had been lined, at Schwarz's secret request, with subtle sensors and bulk order mood rings they'd channeled for the occasion.
With four eyes and an artificial intelligence system studying the footage, it was trivial to find which faces had paled, and which hearts thundered at all the right moments; in particular near the end, when all the conspirators were captured and boiled alive - such a lovely scene.
Mr. S highlighted those he found most suspicious and, behind him, Schwarz attentively marked off their suspect list.
Pyrrha had spent many a sleepless night clutching onto the hope that this day would come.
She'd imagined herself standing outside a room very much like this one, imagined the anticipation she'd be sure to feel - had run through a thousand fantasies where Penny would wake up- and Pyrrha would be there- and finally, finally… she'd be absolved.
Her feverish dreams of this event had become exaggerated over time; bold emotions colored them- to the point where they'd become heroic films playing out on the backs of her shivering eyelids. The feeling of awaiting Penny's return was familiar to her- so often, so obsessively had Pyrrha scripted it in her most hopeful fantasies.
But this was no fantasy: the day had come. Penny was going to wake up- and it exceeded, in every way, her every expectation.
Not only would Penny be revived, but, as Dr. Polendina had explained, Pyrrha would be critical to the procedure.
Even with the access codes safely procured, Penny couldn't be awakened unless they had a non-dust magnet powerful and precise enough to make the requisite changes to Penny's central computer. Pyrrha looked at her shaking hands; she- Pyrrha, was going to be the one who saved her. Her semblance, which she'd cursed and regretted all these months- was going to save her.
And, standing here- even though she felt a happiness that exceeded her wildest expectations- Pyrrha was surprised by how thoroughly the moment had been tainted, by that hounding fear and disgust with herself that struck her ever since…
Doctor Polendina crossed the tiled floor, a swarm of technicians rushed at his command, their white coated forms tending to Penny's body like nurse ants.
Pyrrha took a deep breath.
She looked back one last time, and drew her eyes up to the observation theatre. Many people were barred from visiting, but among those allowed, she recognized her own team, and instinctively her eyes picked out Nora, whose eyes looked down at her with somber. Ren stood beside her, and Jaune stood beside him.
Pyrrha tried to forget her own recollections of her mother, and she felt suddenly cold in the laboratory room, which was sparse as the last of the technicians left off.
Penny's body lay on a cart. Pyrrha drew closer to it.
She knew the procedure inside out. She'd studied the schematics, she'd practiced the motions every waking hour since she'd been given the requirements. The very first exam they'd given her, testing her abilities on a dummy model, she'd passed flawlessly.
The test models were not unsophisticated pieces of equipment. They were specially constructed to, as closely as possible, mimic Penny's hardware - to provide the conditions ideal for testing Pyrrha's semblance.
Each of those dummies cost two hundred million lien. And ten had been ordered, just to ensure that Pyrrha's precision was up to the task, to make certain that nothing could go awry, when it came time for the real deal - as it had.
Pyrrha didn't care about the money that had been spent on the test articles, but- the sheer expense didn't fail to remind her - just how important it was that she not make a mistake.
During the debriefing, Mr S had assured her that a small disentanglement of her field wouldn't be the end of the world- they could manage any minimal errors later, that she shouldn't be anything but calm… but, still, even that conviction did not keep him from begging her to still be really, really careful when handling Penny.
Pyrrha was well aware of the stakes and the challenges, of the precision required. She didn't hesitate before starting.
She closed her eyes, and reached out with her semblance. More than what her semblance allowed her to do, was what it allowed her to know. The overlapping magnetic fields of the earth and the sun were constant and unyielding, like an eternal mountainside. The metals and machines in the laboratory were like the stars, flashing in discordant time. And in the center of her awareness was Penny. Pyrrha could feel the minutest details of Penny's internal state, as if she were running her fingers through it.
And she got to work.
Pyrrha was a perfectionist. She had been all her life, and she'd put countless hours of mastery into everything... everything... everything. She'd trained, labored, and broken herself all her life until she was a master of combat, until she'd learned enough about electronics that she could read nano-scale computing architecture as if it were street sign, until she could weave her semblance deftly through the minutest details of Penny's restored internals.
She was at work now, and the world seemed to vanish, her troubles cast away.
The sequence was familiar, and great thought went into it's every detail; the steps were rapid, and performed in a precise order, each one timed and detoured perfectly. Things could not be slightly off- they couldn't be anything other than perfect. And Pyrrha, at this point, was incapable of making mistakes.
Seconds after she had begun, the repair was done; Penny was fixed, and Pyrrha let the field gradually flatten away into nothingness.
The computer took a few moments to catch up- by the time it was declaring Pyrrha's success, she was already at the exit.
They cheered for her when she came out.
Pyrrha turned away before she could catch glimpse of them. She walked away, strong strides carrying her away, as she headed for the roof.
Mr. S turned Mr. Schnee's cold gaze onto the nun.
Or, atleast, he thought she was a nun - why else would she be wearing that outfit?
"Yes, Miss..." he looked down at the suspect list, pretending he hadn't memorized her name, pretending that she wasn't, in his eyes, the prime suspect.
Oh, there was very little evidence connecting her to the crime. In fact, she was the suspect with the least evidence against her - a perfect behavioral record, according to the castle's documentation. And that was precisely what made Mr. S suspect her the most, what made him want to interrogate her first. He never trusted people with perfect attendance- they were always just trying to hide something from their fill-ins. And he never trusted people with supposedly perfect behavioral records either… he just didn't.
"Ms. Schafe, was it?" Mr. S asked, drawing on the unnatural charisma that this body possessed, keeping the woman in front of him calm with sublime ease. Oh, with his brains and this body's skills, he was a natural interrogator. And he had her exactly where he wanted her- feeling comfortable.
Keeping the suspect calm: that was the first step in "How to interrogate, Part 2". He'd read the book just before the suspects had been called over. He didn't have time to finish it, of course, and the value derived from skimming it was, perhaps, hindered by the fact that the book was a sequel- but Mr. S was sure he'd gotten the gist of it.
"Yes;" the nun answered, inclining her head in a respectful nod.
And onto Step 2: stating obvious facts until they were drawn into a habit of agreeing with you.
"You have a perfect attendance record," he said, tilting his file to get a better look. "Impressive," he nodded appreciatively, skillfully hiding his suspicions.
"Oh, well," the woman smiled bashfully, embarrassed at the praise. "The work is just so rewarding; it's a joy to come in every day."
Mr. S smiled back, and went on to Step 3: ask questions you know the answer to.
"What is your job, exactly?"
"Oh, I work in the chapel," the woman said softly, smiling happily at the thought.
"So you're a woman of god," Mr. S stated.
"Uhm, well, the Sun God, yes," she answered, nodding, "but, we're happy to host individuals of all faiths."
And there Mr. S saw the opening for Step 4: destroy the subject's deepest beliefs, so that, in their despair, they reveal everything to you.
"Hmm, the 'Sun God,'" Mr. S said with a skeptical tone of voice, "quite an astronomically contentious deity, what when you consider recent solar observations."
"You don't have to hold back around me, Mr. Schnee," the nun laughed sweetly. "You haven't made your atheism a secret, and I have heard of these things called unbelievers," she said, teasing playfully.
"Yes," Mr. S nodded seriously over at the murderess, "but... have you heard of these things called facts?"
Pyrrha hugged her knees, hiding the lower half of her face behind them. She sat atop the high spire that decorated the Schnee Manor's rooftop.
Below her, a landing bullhead did a decent job of masking Blake's approach.
"What do you want?" Pyrrha asked, words muffled against her greaves.
Blake - looking down at the hundred foot fall - carefully lowered herself, and sat by her, looking out into the distance.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon, and twilight painted itself in royal purples across the lightening sky.
Blake was unnaturally quiet, as always; even her breathing seemed insubstantial against the open air, and when Pyrrha wasn't looking at her, she seemed to disappear completely into the constant background noise of landing bullheads.
So it was almost easier for Pyrrha to imagine that Blake wasn't there, when she started talking.
"I saved her," Pyrrha said, feeling, for the first time, as if she were free to breath without guilt. "You probably saw that, didn't you?" she added, addressing no one.
No answer came, and for a moment silence reigned.
"I've never had friends," Pyrrha said, voice dragged by weariness. "I… was under a great burden, to live up to the family name, to be worthy of it. I had to become the best." Pyrrha's clenched fists shook at the memories of unrelenting exhaustion and pain that marked her earliest memories, so much of it that Pyrrha could hardly distinguish it from the tired lines that ran through her overworked nerves. "Well, eventually, I did become the best, and then no one wanted to be friends with me… because I was the greatest. In everyone's eyes I was either the competition to beat or the hero to be worshipped… worship is a hair's breadth from hatred, it turns out… a poor substitute for companionship, wouldn't you say?"
Again, she seemed to address the words as if she were talking to herself, and the jeers and fearful looks of everyone, of the public, of the comments…
Pyrrha paused, shutting her eyes- trying not to think about the rest of the story- which involved far more scathing, and far more recent, failures.
And those failures recalled her memories.
"It's not completely true to say I had no one," Pyrrha said. "I had my mother, who loved me," she said the words with a profound sense of loss. "I had team Juniper, who…"
She broke off, a tearful breath escaped her and she hid her eyes against the crossed forearms that held her legs to her.
"You betrayed them, and they won't ever forgive you… that's what you're feeling, isn't it?" Blake asked.
Pyrrha was almost surprised to find Blake there when she turned her eyes upon her. Pyrrha nodded, too weary to speak.
"You really never did have friends, did you?" Blake laughed.
Pyrrha flinched. It- hurt that Blake would laugh at her at such a time, and she was prepared to say as much when Blake wrapped her in a warm hug, sobbing out her own tears in advance of Pyrrha's.
"You idiot!" Blake yelled, chuckling, and saying the words as if she were talking to herself. "They wouldn't leave if you begged them to!" She started truly laughing, now.
Pyrrha hugged Blake closer, and buried her face in the faunus' ebony hair. Blake could sense that the action was based in fear, in the senseless terror of someone in the grip of a storm, who was searching for some handhold to steady themselves with. "How can you know that!?" Pyrrha cried, "Nora… she tries to talk to me, she tries to be nice. But- she's always scared when she does, always -" Pyrrha sputtered over fresh tears, " - always trying to hide her nerves! How can we remain together after what I've done, when she has to overcome that!? How can we be friends when everything is based on her pity?!"
Blake tightened her hug to match Pyrrha's own grip, this time for her own benefit. "Because she's your friend, Pyrrha! And she's not scared for herself, she's scared for you; she's scared that you might lose yourself to your guilt, and be lost to her forever. I know you're afraid, and I know you don't believe me, but please," Blake begged, "go to them! They can't understand what you're going through; they don't know what guilt is, but believe me, they want to help you so much, and it's hurting them - it's hurting all of us, to see you doing this to yourself."
And Blake, now, too, burst into tears, hugging onto the larger girl. She felt like a small child, her hands weakly pawing against the back of Pyrrha's harness, as she shut her eyes and bawled her eyes out to match Pyrrha's similar exclamations.
Because, Blake, as she spoke of Pyrrha and Nora, felt unable to keep herself from thinking about Weiss… and herself.
And they held each other and cried because they were scared, and because they were afraid to be alone, and because they were friends.
Nora reeled when she turned the corner and found Pyrrha standing there, towering over her.
Jaune came around the corner and bumped into her, sending her stumbling several steps forward. Nora felt- small, as she drew closer to her teammate.
Ren was the last to come around the corner, accompanied by Weiss and Ruby, such that they formed a crowd, with Nora at the head, face to face with Pyrrha.
Pyrrha was a statue, and even her breathing seemed frozen. She turned a light glance over them all - her eyes were the deepest blue, now, and her hair seemed a battle ground between brown and red; and she turned the shimmering teal of her eyes down, looking over the dark bags at Nora.
"Uhm, hey Pyrrha," Nora began, unusually bashful, "I- oh!"
Pyrrha fell to her knees. Her palms pressed flat against the tiling, and her crown touched the floor with a metallic clink.
Nora nearly jumped back at the spectacle, looking down at it with disbelieving eyes.
Pyrrha was bowing to her.
Pyrrha's voice was wavering, and supremely fearful as she said, almost too loudly: "I should never have struck you, Nora! It was wrong of me, and I'm sorry. I feel sick even recalling it; you're my team mate, and you've watched out for me since the beginning, and to even-"
Pyrrha was interrupted when a strong jerk pulled her to her feet, and a tight grip pulled her into a hug.
"Of course I forgive you! Duh!" Nora answered, a wide smile on her face.
Pyrrha felt sick, weak at the knees, and for once thankful for Nora's supremely tight hugs, which she was sure was the only thing keeping her from falling.
"You- you forgive me?" she said hollowly, speaking the words as if they had a foreign flavor to them.
As if to answer her, Ren came over and, pausing at the edge, goaded by a frankly displeased look from Nora, joined the hug, followed afterwards by Jaune, then by an enthusiastic Ruby, a somewhat reluctant Weiss, and, finally, Blake.
Weiss, despite her initial hesitation, however, couldn't fail to note how precisely Blake had chosen her position, and how this was the first hug she'd initiated since she'd run off several days ago.
"So, have you gotten over your… issues, then?" Weiss looked hopefully back at Blake, keeping her voice to a private whisper, and trusting that her girlfriend's ears would capture it.
Blake nodded.
Weiss only cocked an eyebrow.
Blake only smiled down at her.
"Ok, look," Mr. S said, frustratedly talking over the scale model of the solar system he'd drawn onto the whiteboard." Just because there can be a teapot in orbit between Remnant and the moon- that doesn't mean there's any good reason to believe there is!"
"But," the nun said, with perfect repose, "there can be a teapot. Surely, you don't deny that."
"That's no basis for belief!"
"That is the essence of faith," the nun shot back.
Mr. S was growing genuinely angry now- he was being taunted, by his own murderer!
What was he even doing, arguing with her about celestial mechanics?! All he'd wanted was for her entire worldview to crumble so she'd confess, like the book said!
"Oh, faith, is that why you're a nun!?" Mr. S accused. He was pacing now, and his towering shadow crossed over the sitting nun like a beating metronome.
"I would be hard pressed to find any other reason one might enter this profession," Ms. Schafe said, hands folded across her lap, and seeming very composed for someone who had been called into an interrogation room without warning.
"And what is your relationship to the sun god, exactly?" Mr. S asked.
"We are his wives," the nun answered proudly, puffing up in her seat, "we have taken a vow to act as such."
"Hm," Mr. S nodded shortly, "pretty weird, don't you think?"
For the first time, the woman looked disconcerted, and she lifted an offended hand up to her bust. "What do you know about marriage?!" she accused, sounding genuinely hurt.
"I know everything about marriage!" Mr. S snarled, a crazed look in his eye. "And I'm pressed to ask if you even considered the sun god's feelings before you dropped this proposal! Maybe he's not looking for a relationship right now - ever thought of that?"
"Of course we ask him!" the nun said- but there was doubt in her voice, tears coming to her eyes. "We ask him every day in our prayers!"
"And does he answer?" Mr. S asked rhetorically, spreading his arms out to either side.
"What?" the nun chuckled. For the first time, she shed that implacable exterior that had protected her from his most probing questions.
He had her now!
Step 5: strike at the heart of the accusation!
"And why would he answer?" Mr. S charged, pointing an accusatory finger, "considering you're a no good, criminal mastermind!"
"What?! What are you talking about?" the nun was sweating now, and her eyes bounced access to every corner and wall. "I haven't done anything! This is completely-!"
Mr. S slammed his hand on the desk, rattling the glass cups that had been left on it. "We have video evidence, witness statements, admissions from every conspirator except yourself!" Mr. S counted off on his fingers, and, directing his hands with a forceful gesture, boomed the command: "We know it was you! Confess!"
The nun burst into tears, resting her forehead on her crossed arms, which she lay flat across the table.
"Ok! I admit it!" she cried out, body wracked with sobs. "It was me! It was all my fault! I'm responsible for everything!"
"Yes, yessss!" Mr. S hissed like a snake and hunched over the table, cradling a notebook close at hand. "Tell me everything!"
"I should never have tried to hide it!" the woman cried.
"What? Tell me exactly what!"
Mr. S was nearly exploding! This horrible mystery - to think it would finally be coming to an end, that it was finally over! He could feel his back warming, as the spectre of death lifted its' great weight off of him.
The nun sat up with a horrified expression, tears streaming down her painfully shut eyes. "I'm… I'm the one who listed incense as a business expense!" she spoke the words quickly, as if tearing off a bandage by speaking them.
Mr. S froze. "What?"
"On my tax returns," the nun explained, talking through her tears, "I listed incense as a business expense!"
"Isn't it?" Mr. S asked.
"But I like the smell of it! I'd buy it anyway!"
Bang!
The interrogation rooms were constructed of a single block of alloy, and the door was the only exception in this uniformity, being made of a two foot thick block of metal that hinged off the rest of the structure.
So it made quite the noise when the door burst open. The room shook under Mr. S's feet and Schwarz walked in, carrying a prearranged stack of files and color maps.
"Sir, the conspirators have confessed; I have a report here detailing their organizational ties and g-"
Schwarz paused and looked to the crying nun.
Mr. S gestured: "So… I take it she's not part of the conspiracy, then?" he asked, nearly hissing the words.
"Nnnno," Schwarz said. She pointed back to the flood of other innocent suspects, who were in the process of being released.
"Well," he chuckled, clapping his hands, straightening his jacket, and turning to the nun, "you're free to go, then, it appears."
This, making women cry by falsely accusing them of crimes was turning into a bad habit, Mr. S realized.
"Well, it is the thought that counts," Pyrrha said, having finally opened her present, and hovering the golden compass it contained in front of her.
"He didn't put any thought into them at all!" Weiss barked back, still holding her crumbled vouchers. "Or, at least, not the kind of thought anyone sane would have!"
A sudden silence fell over the group, all of them having learned, by now, the hazards of contradicting Weiss with regards to anything involving her father.
Even their silence, however, spoke in great measure of their general skepticism with regards to Weiss's proclamation that her father was, literally, "the worst." Said silent skepticism was on the rise, following Penny's recently celebrated revival, and Weiss could sense it.
"What?" she asked defensively, turning to look at the averted gazes, most notably that of Pyrrha. "You don't believe me, do you?" she scoffed, "Unbelievable! You're all falling for it, just like Jaune!"
"Hey, I was just happy we won the ga-"
"Oh, thank the gods, we did it! I love you, Weiss's dad!" Nora mimicked, raising her hands with mocking revelation, much to the delight of everyone who wasn't Jaune, who chuckled along with the act, even as they sent sympathetic looks to its subject.
"Well, you try being…" Jaune trailed off into annoyed grumbles, looking aside as he thrust his hands into his pockets.
It was at that point that Mr. S walked out of the nearby interrogation room, followed by Schwarz- and then afterwards by a crying nun. Said nun was supported and guided out by two of the older nuns, who were trying- and failing- to console the distraught woman, who could only bumble senseless things about teapots, tax evasion, and Mr. Schnee.
The entirety of the group stopped to look at the scene with wide eyes; all of them, that was, except Weiss, who merely turned to them with a bored look and said:
"Told you so."
