"I never expected to see this in my lifetime," Cinder said, peering over the bed at the two tiny creatures running in a circle. Zwei and Mr. Tibbs had really hit it off, the adorable tubby animals having spent the entire morning chasing each other around the house. It was hard for Cinder to comprehend a Grimm experiencing some sort of emotion; that emotion being joy was even stranger. Not that she disapproved, of course. Zwei was cute on his own; a little pachyderm friend brought the cuteness levels to an all-time high.

Reaching for her scroll to film the delightful play session, Cinder nearly fell out of her bunk when the door flew open with no warning. Zwei and Mr. Tibbs were almost trampled by Ruby carrying an incredibly stinky Weiss over her shoulder. She plopped the heiress onto the carpet as Cinder pinched her nose.

"Oh, God!" Fall winced, her eyes beginning to water from the stench, "What the hell happened?!"

"Toilet water!" Ruby said, throwing a blanket onto Weiss to cry her off, "Jaune's fault!"

Fall remembered the loud yelling coming from the hallway a little bit ago; it was a good thing she decided not to go investigate. "Then why bring her in here Ruby? She reeks!"

"Huh. Didn't really thin this one through that much."

Weiss's face turned a sickly shade of green. "Buh… Bucket…"

Spotting Cinder's trash can, Ruby snagged it just before Schnee made a mess of the rug. Cinder wasn't too happy about that one. She'd already cleaned puke out of the thing before, and was hoping she'd never have to do it again. "Can you please take her outside? If I keep smelling her then I'm going to vomit as well."

"This is so embarrassing…" Weiss moaned, wiping the dribble from her mouth, "Jaune's going to pay for this when I'm feeling better!"

"Aw, you don't mean that!" Ruby smiled, making the mistake of slapping Weiss on the back.

"Blurp!"

"Gah! Look into the bucket, Weiss! Mystical mysteries lie within!"

With Ruby rubbing her best friend's back comfortingly, an arriving Emerald took one step into the room and immediately regretted doing so. She looked at Cinder sympathetically. "Are you sure you don't want to switch rooms with Nora?"

As Weiss began gagging once more, Cinder was seriously considering that offer right now.

"Alpha Minor, do you copy? I repeat, do you copy?"

Standing by the movie theater curtain, Ren looked at his scroll in confusion. He brought it to his ear to question his repair partner he had only left minutes ago. "Lieutenant, you know you can just call me Ren, right?"

"Just trying to add a bit of pizazz," the big guy said, hand on his hip as he kept an eye on the bathroom door, "Adam always lets me use code names when we go out on missions."

"Alright. What should I call you then?"

"What day is it today?"

"Tuesday, I think. Why?"

"I have a different one for each day of the week. Give me a second to remember…"

"We don't have a second to spare," Ren parted through the curtain, flipping on his flashlight as he entered the murky upper basement, "That bathroom is most likely filled to the brim by now. How is the door holding up?"

"Oh yeah, the door," the Lieutenant looked at it for a second, "It's wet. Like, water is seeping through the wood - Oh!"

"What? Is something wrong?"

"Milo! That was Tuesday's code name! How could I forget that one? It's such a fabulous nickname!"

"Please focus!" ordered Ren. He ducked underneath a huge cobweb as he came across a mess of pipes. He followed the trail of twisting metal until he stumbled across a door in the floor. As he reached to open it, a head of ginger hair popped out through the hatch.

"What are you doing down here, you fool?!" Virulet spat at Ren, "This is my domain! Leave at once!"

Figuring he could question the strange girl later about why she spent her time down here in the dark, Ren decided to get back to business. "Sorry, Penny. Could I go down there for a minute? We have a plumbing issue upstairs."

"Plumbing, you say?" This intrigued Virulet. As an artificial being, he knew not what this 'plumbing' thing referred to. Was it perhaps a biological process? Or maybe it was the reason for all those blasted pipes he kept running into? "Has anyone been injured by this yet? Just for curiosity's sake, mind you. I gain no joy whatsoever in hearing about the misery of others."

"Well, Weiss is currently throwing up, so that counts I guess."

"Ah, that's delightfully unfortunate! Now please, go away. I'm busy being busy."

"Can't I come down for a few minutes?"

"NO!" Virulet exclaimed, regaining his composure quickly as Ren raised an eyebrow at his outburst. The last thing he needed was for one of these stinking humans to see his masterpiece in its completed state! It would ruin everything! "I mean… No. You cannot. There are many rats down here. With super-rabies. Extremely deadly."

"Then how are you down there?"

"I have made them my children. I am the Rat King- er, Queen. Yes! That's it. The Queen of Rats. Because I am a girl. Not a male in the slightest."

"…Right. Then could you do me a favor at least?"

Virulet sighed, rolling his eyes in exasperation. Why couldn't this flesh bag stop being so pestering? "Fine. How can I assist you?"

"See this pipe?" Ren tapped on a piece of metal that went into the floor, "If you look around in the dark, you should see a rivet sticking out of a part of it. Take this wrench and turn it gently to the right."

Virulet took hold of Ren's tool, studying it. "This looks like a bludgeoning weapon. Could it be used as such?"

"I guess so? Are you going to fix the pipe or…?"

"Yes-yes-yes, I will. Just leave me be." The trap door fell shut, Virulet descending back down into the darkness. He waited for the sound of Ren's footsteps to vanish before starting the task. "Stupid humans… Making me do their menial tasks! I am going to love skinning their spines and playing on their ribcages like instruments! Oh yes, it will be quite marvelous!"

Running his fingers across the pipes, he soon encountered the rivet Ren had mentioned. Virulet looked at the wrench, noticing the gap was much too small to fit around the bolt. The boy had told him to be gentle with the task: Virulet didn't do gentle. Why be delicate when you can be brutal?

Gripping the metal tool tightly, Virulet grinned sadistically as he struck the pipe with all his strength. The dented metal made a strange gurgling sound, but the A.I took no notice of it as he continued to beat it.

Big mistake.

"Yes, yes! I shall crush you until you can no longer- FWAHHHGGH!"

Virulet may have been afraid of fire, but that didn't mean he enjoyed its opposite. The water from upstairs had now begun to descend downwards out of the busted pipe, slowly filling the basement like a fish tank. Feeling Polendina's circuits begin to spark, Virulet quickly turned his attention to his masterpiece, fully constructed in the far corner of the room. He extended Penny's wires, wrapped around the many fragments of his creation, and crossed his arms to fold it into itself. And to think he almost didn't implement the emergency pack-up form for it! Not being able to slay those flesh bags upstairs with such a gloriously designed body; now that would have truly been a disaster!

"Farewell, my evil lair," Virulet saluted his flooding home, his masterpiece compressing into Polendina's backpack, "You served me well… Now drown in a watery abyss! Mwah-ha-ha!"

"Milo to Alpha Minor, do you copy?" The Lieutenant's ear was pressed to the bathroom door. He had heard an obscenely loud swirling sound coming from within, and needed to contact his partner-in-plumbing. "I think the water's going away! Alpha Minor? You there?"

"Right here," Ren replied from behind him. The big guy dropped his scroll and chest bumped his so hard it knocked him into the wall. "A little warning next time."

"Whoops. So, everything's all squeaky clean? No more trouble?"

"Hopefully. Penny seems to have fixed things down below. Did you even know we had a second basement?"

"Uh-uh. Was it nice and roomy?"

"Not sure. She wouldn't let me go down."

"Maybe we could throw a rave down there. I've got a lot of extra glitter and baby oil on me for one!"

"I would not recommend it," a new voice said, "That room is the equivalent of a fish tank by now."

Ren and the Lieutenant turned to see Virulet beside them, dripping wet and reeking of drainage. "You got up here quick, Penny. Do you need a towel to dry off?"

"Where is the Goliath at?"

The question caught Ren off guard. It was weird; she had answered him so quickly, and without hesitation. Why was she so intent on finding that creature when she was coated in sewage?

"I think its playing with Zwei. But why-

"Thank you kindly," the A.I bowed, then walked briskly off with a dark smile on his lips. With his masterpiece complete, there remained only one thing left to do before the big day.

"That was odd," the big guy shrugged, "Guess I'll go tell everyone we don't have running water anymore. This'll go well…"

Ren stood alone in the hall, Penny's strange behavior on his mind. Yes, she was always a bit quirky. But something about her just now was… off. Not in a so weird its funny way, though. More like she was putting on an act, like she was hiding something.

And it worried him just a bit more than he liked it too.