A/N: Hi! Welcome back! I hope you're all doing well! I don't know how many are tuning in for these re-postings, but a very warm hello to all of you. :) Just a reminder, this chapter (like the ones before it) is a re-written version of the original. If you've got a second to spare when you're done reading, I'd love to hear some feedback about what you think; the only reviews attached to this story at the moment are a couple years old and about the original versions of the chapters, so...yeah. XD

Okay, happy reading!

Chapter 5

Valeria was beginning to regret bringing her sister along. And not for any of the reasons she would have anticipated.

"How much farther?" Vanessa demanded, for what felt like the ten thousandth time.

"The first town," Valeria said through gritted teeth, "is still another twenty minutes away. Just as it has been since you asked thirty seconds ago."

Vanessa gave an exasperated groan. "This is taking forever!"

"Would you please stop whining?" Valeria snapped, flexing her fingers on the steering wheel. "We'll get there when we get there."

"Are you two always like this?" Genesis asked curiously.

"Depends on the day," Valeria responded tiredly, knowing that her sister was just irritable from being cramped in the Atlas for several hours and not really being a bitch on purpose. Still, it was hard not to take her twin's attitude a little personally.

"Depends on the driver not getting lost," Vanessa retorted.

Make that impossible to not take personally. "I am not lost."

Vanessa snorted."You are totally-" She broke off abruptly as something caught her attention. "What's that?"

"What's what?" Valeria asked.

Vanessa pointed, her ire seemingly forgotten in light of something more interesting to focus on than the endless stretch of road. "Over there."

Genesis and Valeria both squinted into the distance

"Fiends," the ex-SOLDIER said after a moment. "Some sort of hellhound, I think. But they're not the kind that are normally in this area," he added. "Or at least they weren't the last time I was here. I suppose that subspecies might have migrated."

"No, you're right," Val said in agreement. "That breed's usually found more up north. They're not native to this area."

"So what are they doing out here?" Vanessa asked curiously.

"I don't know," Valeria replied, then spun the steering wheel sharply, turning the car so that they were heading straight towards the fiends. "Let's go find out."

"Val!" Vanessa grabbed onto the back of the driver's seat to avoid being thrown out of the Atlas. "We're heading towards the fiends because…?"

"It might be related to what we're working on," Valeria said at once, eyes dancing with excitement. "So we should check it out."

"You just want a good fight," the younger twin accused.

"That has nothing to do with it."

"Uh-huh," Vanessa said, totally unconvinced. "Sure."

Genesis, of all people, rolled his eyes.

Valeria, not one to opt out of a dramatic entrance, stomped down on the accelerator and slammed her precious Atlas straight into the first wave of hellhounds, swinging the vehicle around to a screeching halt before vaulting out and drawing her bladed tonfa from their sheaths on her back. "Stay in the car," she ordered her sister.

Vanessa raised her eyebrows, leaning back in her seat with an amused expression. "Do I look like I want to get chewed to pieces?" she asked. "You're the one picking fights with hellhounds, Val; I'm content to wait right here."

"I'm not," Genesis remarked, and then he was up and out of the car, too, red coat flaring out behind him as he dashed forward to engage with the monsters who were charging forward to attack.

Vanessa whistled in appreciation as they watched him dart swiftly in and around the hellhounds even as he delivered crippling blows with his crimson sword. "He moves good for an old guy."

Valeria rolled her eyes. "He's not that old," she said dryly. "Under thirty still, if I had to guess."

Vanessa's expression turned speculative. "Not much older than us, then," she remarked.

"That," Valeria called over her shoulder as she jogged forward to join the battle, "is completely irrelevant in every single way."

In the end, it didn't take Valeria and Genesis long to finish off the last of the hellhounds once they were both working in tandem. Before the bodies vanished and melted away into the Lifestream, however, they discovered something interesting.

"They all have some sort of transmitter on their bodies," Vanessa said, holding up a small metallic box that she'd yanked from the chest of one of the beasts. "Here, come see."

Valeria came over and knelt next to her sister, frowning first at the box Vanessa was holding then at the hellhound corpse she'd taken it from. "A transmitter, huh? What for?"

Vanessa gave a fluid shrug. "Who knows? But it's definitely not normal." She tossed it to Genesis. "Seen anything like it before?"

He shook his head. "Never. Weiss might know more," he added, "if we can find him."

Valeria froze mid-motion as she reached to flip over dead hellhound. Please tell me I didn't hear that just now.

Vanessa, likewise, worse a befuddled scowl. "Weiss?" she repeated uncertainly, as if needing know she'd heard him right. She didn't know all the details of everything that had gone on with Deepground and the Tsviets, but Val had told her enough to know that Weiss was not really the nicest of people. Was very probably a genocidal maniac, in fact.

Genesis, oblivious to their dark looks, nodded. "The man I found in the cavern when I awoke. Like I said before, he came out here to investigate, and I haven't heard from him since."

"Hold on," Valeria said, standing, "just one damn minute." She took a shaky breath. "Do you mean the Weiss? As in, the Immaculate?"

Genesis looked confused. "There's only the one."

Valeria had a suddenly strong urge to flail madly at the heavens and demand to know what exactly she had done to deserve this. "You've got to be kidding me," she snarled angrily. "He's Deepground! Not to mention dead," she tacked on.

Genesis shook his head. "He's alive. And he wasn't the one responsible for-"

Valeria just made a hissing sound and made an angry slashing motion. "Weiss cannot be alive," she snapped. "It's not possible. Vincent saw him fall after Omega was defeated."

"I assure you," Genesis said, eyes narrowing at Valeria's hostile tone, "he was alive and well when I saw him last."

Valeria gave a strained laugh. "No. No way. Absolutely not. This is...this just isn't possible." She shook her head and started pacing with an intensity that bordered on frantic."Of course, what was I thinking?" she muttered, ignoring her two companions entirely. "It must have been a hallucination of some sort. An ex-SOLDIER, missing in action for all these years, presumed dead…of course, he's lost his mind, what was I expecting? And of course it's not as easy as just doing the mission, no, I have to drag along my baby sister and some insane person…and stupid Reeve, what's he thinking, making me come all the way out here just to-"

"Val," Vanessa said, trying to interrupt her sister's little monologue. But her twin was having none of it, and continued pacing and grumbling to herself as if Vanessa hadn't even spoken.

"Is she alright?" Genesis asked warily, looking faintly worried.

Vanessa sighed, but nodded. "She's fine. Just having one of her little rants. A well-earned one, to be honest. As a WRO captain she's got major issues with anything to do with Deepground."

"I promise you," Genesis said under his breath, "that Weiss and I have major issues with them as well."

Vanessa gave him a skeptical look but didn't comment. "Val will be alright in a minute," she said instead. "She just needs to vent a bit."

Sure enough, Valeria continued walking back and forth and muttering to herself for another few minutes, then abruptly stopped. "Okay," she said at last, her voice and body posture tense and unhappy. So it's...it is the same Weiss. Presumably."

Genesis hesitated, not sure what to make of the seemingly calmValeria in front of him, then nodded. "Yes."

She took a deep breath. "Okay." She took another deep breath. "That's okay. I can deal with that."

Vanessa watched her sister carefully, knowing that her sister probably wasn't as okay with it as she sounded. "You sure?" she asked. "I mean, you're WRO. He's Deepground."

"Are you trying to get me angry again?" Valeria demanded, eyes flashing.

Vanessa put her hands up, backing off. "Alright, alright. Forget I said anything. What's our plan?"

Valeria huffed, her mouth still turned downward in a scowl. "We go check out the towns, like we'd originally planned. Find Weiss," she added grudgingly, slanting an annoyed look in Genesis's direction. .

"Find Weiss," Vanessa repeated cautiously, not wanting to set her sister off but needing to be certain that they were really on the same page here.

"That's what I said, isn't it?" Valeria said irritably, then sighed. "If you're right, Genesis, and there's some small chance that he might really be on our side, or at least not a complete and total maniac-"

"He is on our side," Genesis said confidently.

"If he is," she continued, not missing a beat, "then we need to find him, and find out what he knows. You said he came out here to investigate?"she said inquiringly.

Genesis nodded.

"Then maybe he knows something about these transceivers," she theorized, nodding at the device the ex-SOLDIER was holding. "At the very least it gives us one more person who'll fight on our side. Maybe." A very shaky maybe, she thought.

And honestly, even if by some miracle Weiss wasn't the homicidal maniac he'd seemed to be while leading Deepground, she was definitely not thrilled at the prospect of being within ten miles of him, much less cooperating with the man. He was her enemy. When she'd been watching that video transmission with her squad members, it had been Weiss's face that had been burned into their brains even as they listened with horror to the tirade he'd been giving at the time. It had been his face she and her soldiers had envisioned shooting pointblank as they'd joined in that final assault on Deepground. It had been his face she'd pictured dissolving and fading away into the Lifestream after hearing secondhand about how Vincent had taken down the remaining Tsviets, including the Emperor himself.

But there wasn't much she could do about that little angry ball of fury in her chest right now, was there? No...she needed to focus on the mission.

They got back into Valeria's Atlas, and continued on until they finally reached the town they'd been heading towards for so long. Unfortunately, no answers were forthcoming when they arrived. If anything, what they found in the town opened up a whole new slew of questions.

"Where is everyone?" Vanessa asked as she hopped out of the Atlas. "I know the reports said that some people had gone missing, but this is ridiculous. This place looks totally deserted."

Valeria and Genesis stepped out as well, both frowning as they took in their surroundings.

"This town is supposed to have five hundred people in it," the green eyed twin said, reaching back into the car to pull out the file folder Claire had given her that morning. "Five hundred and twenty-seven to be exact, according to the last census count."

"So, where are they?" Vanessa repeated. "A whole town doesn't just empty out overnight."

"No," Valeria agreed, "it doesn't." She unsheathed one of her bladed tonfa. "Let's go have a look around, shall we? Nessa, you take Genesis, go that way." She pointed in the direction of what seemed to have been a town hall at some point. "And I'll go this way, " she added, tilting her head down a street heading the opposite way. "Call if you see anything, okay?"

Vanessa nodded. "Sure thing."

Vanessa wasn't entirely sure what to think of her overprotective twin sending her off into unknown territory with a complete and total stranger. On one hand, she knew that her twin obviously didn't think there was any real danger to be had from Genesis, otherwise she wouldn't have risked Vanessa being anywhere near him, much less escorted by him with Val haring off in the opposite direction.

On the other hand, her sister was intensely overprotective, and this was wildly out of character for her. Unless she was trying to be slightly less suffocating in her safeguarding. In which case Vanessa was grateful, if somewhat confused by the sudden shift in attitude.

Hmm. Guess I'll just need to ask her what the hell's going on once we have some downtime.

"Can you fight?" Genesis asked a few moments later, his voice breaking her out of her thoughtful reverie.

She blinked at him stupidly for a minute since she'd not been paying attention, then recalled what he'd asked her. "These pistols aren't for show," she informed him with amusement once she'd sorted herself out. "I'd be an official member of the WRO, too, if Val weren't so damned overprotective."

Genesis gave a smirk that was somehow more heartwarming that condescending. "Is that so."

She couldn't help it, she grinned a bit in return. "It is." Then she stopped walking as something caught her attention. "Did you hear that?" She turned slightly towards the sound, drawing her pistols.

Genesis nodded, and unsheathed his sword. "More fiends."

Valeria heard gunfire several streets away, and felt a small pang of worry, which she quickly stifled. Genesis was with Vanessa, and even if he wasn't, Vanessa was, as Reeve had repeatedly pointed out, more than capable of looking after herself.

She's fine. She's armed. She's a good shot.

Valeria kept up her silent mantra as she wandered through yet another alleyway. Then, right as she was about to double back and find a different street to check out, she heard the unmistakable sounds of fighting. But Genesis and Nessa went the other way, she realized. Which meant there was someone else fighting fiends nearby.

Someone else nearby, in a town that was completely deserted. Frowning, she drew her other tonfa and headed towards the sounds of fighting.

And of course the person fighting was none other than Weiss the Immaculate. The ridiculous silver-white hair was a dead giveaway, as was his blink-and-you'll-miss it speed and the fact he wore no shirt, for whatever reason.

Of course. That's just my luck. She would run into the man who graced the top of her Most Hated list, of course she would. She'd been half-hoping that Genesis might encounter him first, although the prospect of that had been slightly terrifying, too, because she'd sent Vanessa with the ex-SOLDIER and she didn't want her precious twin exposed to the Emperor of Deepground for any reason or under any circumstances.

It was all moot in any case, since, through some sadistic quirk of fate, she'd stumbled upon him herself.

The white-haired man was, she observed, fighting against a literal horde of fiends. At first glance, there were at least thirty. Possibly forty; they were moving so quickly and were concentrated so closely together it was hard to see where one monster ended and another began.

How the hell is he not dead fighting so many?, she wondered, impressed despite herself. Then she remembered. He was Deepground. A Tsviet no less. And the strongest of them. Rumor had it that he'd been capable of taking on all the other Tsviets at once, single-handedly. She wasn't sure if she believed that, but there was no doubt that the Emperor was a very formidable warrior.

And there she was, needing to rescue him as a second wave of fiends approached and started to close in on him.

Why me? she demanded of no one, before leaping forward to stab a fiend that was trying to jump on Weiss from behind.

He whirled, startled by the sudden commotion behind him, and gave her a guarded look, angling one of his gunblades so that it was pointed at her.

"Don't give me that look," she snapped, half-turning to stab another hellhound that was making a lunge for her leg. "And point that blade somewhere else! I just saved you, in case you weren't paying attention. I with it was Genesis who had found you instead of me," she added heatedly as two more hellhounds leapt at her and she deftly ducked underneath and stabbed through their hearts in one quick motion, "but that's not how it worked out." One more hellhound tried to take advantage of her being distracted to jump at her. She stabbed it through the throat, and kicked it aside. The other hellhounds finally seemed to take the not-so-subtle hint, and they began shuffling away with low growls and uneasy whimpers. Even Weiss looked mildly impressed, albeit in an I-could-still-wipe-the-floor-with-you sort of way.

"Who are you?" he asked, taking a moment to impale a retreating hellhound even as he kept her in his line of sight.

"Captain Valeria Tyler, WRO. Don't you dare point those at me," she warned again, as Weiss tightened his grip on his weapons and started to shift threateningly in her direction. "I came all the way out here to help Genesis find you," she said irritably, although truthfully that had been only half the reason...and not the half she was most invested in carrying out. But as things stood... "I don't want to have to tell him I had to kill you."

"Kill me?" he repeated, smirking slightly as if the thought that she could even remotely pose a threat amused him.

"Shove it," she snapped, whirling around to hack at some of the bolder hounds that crept up behind her with bloodlust in their eyes.

Weiss just chuckled darkly, and turned his attention to the hounds. In the end, there wasn't too muh risk fo getting killed and eaten. They were both incredibly competent warriors individually, and with the teo of them teamed-up, even grudgingly...the hellhounds had never stood even a remote of chance of surviving the battle.

Right as Weiss finished off the last one, Valeria's phone rang.

She dragged one of her blades along the side of her leg to clean off the blood before sheathing it and answering the call. "What?" she demanded.

"Jeez," her twin griped, "cranky much? Ever heard of answering a phone call with 'hello'?"

Valeria inhaled, counting to ten. "Sorry, Nessa. Go ahead."

"Well, there's not much to say since the fight itself turned out to be pretty boring, but you wanted me to keep you posted; so I figured I'd give you a head's up: Genesis and I just ran into a group of fiends."

"Congratulations," Valeria replied. "I found Weiss."

"Already?!" her twin's voice blared from the cell phone speaker. "How?"

"Sheer bad luck," she answered.

"Oh, shut up, you big baby," Vanessa said. "Obviously you two haven't killed each other yet, so things can't be going that bad."

"The day is young yet," Valeria remarked dryly. "I'm sure we'll get around to it eventually."

"Mm," was Vanessa only response at first, following by, "Is it really him?" in a voice so low that Valeria almost didn't hear her.

"Yeah," she answered quietly, still tracking the Deepground Emperor in her peripheral vision because she did not trust him in the slightest. "It's him." She sighed. "Do me a favor and pass the phone to Genesis, okay?"

Muttering darkly, her sister obeyed. "G," she called out, her voice coming through distorted as she turned away from the call, "phone for you."

"G?" Valeria repeated incredulously. "Since when are you on a nickname basis?" she asked accusingly, but her sister wasn't there anymore, having apparently passed the phone on already.

Genesis's voice came through the line a brief moment later. "Captain Tyler?"

She sighed. "Yeah, I'm here. I found Weiss. Hold on." She turned to the white-haired man. "Want to talk to your friend?"

He nodded.

"Awesome," she said, tossing him her phone. "Go ahead."

He caught it easily and brought it up to his ear. "Genesis?…Yes, I'm with her now…A group of fiends…No, I'm fine…Who?…Never mind. How long have I…Really?"

While Weiss was talking on her phone, she investigated the bodies of the fiends they'd killed. Some of the corpses were already beginning to dissovle and return to the Planet, but the rest were still intact enough for her to do a little more snooping.

"They all have these transceivers," she commented to herself, frowning as she unhooked one from the strange harness that kept it connected to the hellhound. "But why? And what data are they collecting?" She turned the metal box over in her hands, and noticed something written on it that she hadn't before.

JUSTICE, it read, in big block letters.

"Justice? What the hell?" She turned the box over, but found no other markings. "Oh, great," she said sarcastically to no one in particular. "An enigma. Wonderful."

"Valeria?"

She gave a little jump, startled; she'd almost forgotten Weiss's presence, she'd been so absorbed in her inspection of the transceiver. "Yeah?" she asked, standing up and dusting herself off as she turned to face him again.

"He wants to talk to you," Weiss remarked, holding out her phone.

"Of course he does." She took her phone back and addressed the man on the other end. "What's up?"

"Vanessa and I are heading for that large building a few blocks over, the one that looks like an office building. Can you meet us there? Weiss knows the location," he added.

"Yeah, but why? What's in that building?

"Answers, hopefully," he replied, but didn't elaborate further.

Still, it was enough for her to go along with, at least for the moment."Sounds good to me," she responded. "I could go for some answers right about now."

He made a sound of assent. "See you there."

"Yeah." She snapped her phone shut, and glanced at Weiss. "So," she said after a moment, trying to ignore the tension crackling in the air between them; as much as she wanted to play nice, there was no way to forget the fact that they were enemies, and their mutual suspicion of one another was going to make this entire venture extremely awkward. "Office building."

Weiss just looked at her, his expression part bored, part arrogant; she suspected it was his default facial expression. "Yeah."

She sighed. "I would like to state for the record that I am not enjoying this at all."

He blinked and gave a reluctant chuckle, but said nothing.

Huffing out an irritated breath, she gestured down the street. "Well, let's go, former Emperor, lead on."

Weiss did speak then. "Nice try," he said, giving her a wry half-smile that came just short of being a sneer. "I'm not letting you at my back."

"And I'm not letting you at mine," she replied easily, crossing her arms. "Should we go hand-in-hand?" she asked sarcastically.

"We'd make quite the couple," he said dryly.

Valeria rolled her eyes. "Can we just get going, please?" she said in exasperation, not bothering to dignify the previous statement with any sort of real response. "I know Genesis is your ally, but I just met him yesterday and he's currently the only thing standing between my baby sister and Goddess knows what. I'll feel better once we regroup and I can keep an eye on her myself."

"You're awfully free with your personal information," Weiss remarked, arching an eyebrow even as he began walking down the street, still watching her carefully from the corner of his eye.

"How so?" she asked blandly, strolling after him with deliberate casualness.

"Well," he said with a smirk, "you just revealed a notable weakness to a powerful enemy. If I were the sort of man to take advantage of that sort of thing," he added slyly, "you might be in trouble."

Valeria snorted, genuinely amused, albeit in a dark sort of way. "Hardly. Threatening my sister in any way would earn you a fast ticket straight to a body bag."

"You seem very certain that you could take me," Weiss observed, even as his own tone of voice indicated that his own opinion on the issue was exactly opposite.

Valeria didn't care about his estimation of her skills one way or the other; she knew exactly how far she was capable of going to protect her sister; in that one aspect of behavior, she was as unmovable as the Goddess herself. "No one fucks with my sister and lives," she said flatly. "Now shut the hell up and walk in silence like a good brooding megalomaniac."

They eventually reached their destination, meeting up with Genesis and Vanessa outside the office building, just as they'd discussed.

"Has anyone else told you you're identical?" Weiss remarked, looking back and forth between Vanessa and Valeria. His tone of voice was a curious combination of bored and amused, as if he found their resemblance interesting but didn't want to look interested.

"It might have been mentioned at some point, yeah," Valeria answered, rolling her eyes. "Though we aren't entirely identical, you know," she felt obligated to add, waving a hand at her vivid green eyes that were so different from her sister's.

Weiss just arched a brow, exchanged a look with Genesis that she couldn't read, then turned to face the building. The four of them started walking up the wide stairs leading to the entrance in a moment of silent accord, and something occurred to her.

"Why is there an office building?" she asked aloud. "There are no companies all the way out here."

Vanessa frowned. "None at all? Are you sure?"

"Positive," Val asserted. "Reeve ran a thorough search on the entire area. This town is supposed to be a small-time fabrics manufacturer; home-spun clothing made by the townspeople, that sort of thing." She tilted her head back and scowled at the towering skyscraper. "There were no records of anything like this at all. No construction permits, no land taxes, nothing."

"I don't know much about it, either," Weiss said with slight reluctance. "I managed to speak with a handful of very skittish villagers, though...before they, too, vanished without a trace."

Valeria made an annoyed sound when he gave no indication of sharing the information he'd gather. "Okay, and?"

He slanted her a smile that was just a little too patronizing. "From what they told me, it's owned by a group called Justice. Apparently they came out of nowhere and just set up shop here."

"There was a logo," Valeria muttered, frowning, "on the transmitters. It said Justice." Shaking her head, she chewed on her lip. "Just who the hell are these guys?"

Weiss shrugged. "No idea. By the time I realized that they might be up to something, everyone in the town had disappeared."

"Good detective work there, Emperor," Valeria said sarcastically. "Well done."

Weiss shot her an angry glare but didn't reply.

"That's something I was curious about," Vanessa said, interjecting herself into their conversation. "Where did everyone go?"

"Joined up maybe?" Valeria offered with a shrug. "In any case," she went on, "we need to find out who these people are. Let's go." She led the way into the building, with Vanessa close on her heels and Genesis and Weiss flanking them on either side in a way that would have made Val nervous if she'd thought them a serious threat.

Oh, who the hell was she kidding, it still made her nervous; she made sure to shift her gaze back and forth between them periodically, to make sure that they weren't about to try something.

"Okay," she said once they reached the lobby. "Let's split up. Vanessa and I will go check out the basement levels," she decided, unwilling to separate from her twin again even if it meant letting two fugitives on the loose with no supervision. It was, she reasoned, not really her problem if they got into or created some sort of trouble; she was here to investigate, with her sister as back-up. Babysitting Genesis was a secondary objective, and she could always track him down later if she had to. So..."You guys check the upper floors," she told them.

They exchanged another of those looks, then nodded, heading off towards a stairwell that would take them to the upper floors.

Vanessa, meanwhile, trailed after her twin as Val strode over to the opposite end of the lobby and wrenched open the thick metal doors of what had previously been a fully-functioning elevator.

Vanessa gave the elevator shaft a dubious look. "This doesn't seem safe," she observed.

"Relax," her twin replied. "The elevator itself seems to be frozen in the upper levels somewhere." She flicked a light on the outer display that glowed very faintly in the gloom. "And we're heading down, anyway."

Vanessa just sighed and followed after her sister as Val swung over on the thing metal ladder that ran the length of the shaft. "So, " she said after a few minutes of silent descent, "here we are."

Valeria glanced up at her absently before looking back down at where she was putting her feet. "Wherever here is, yeah."

Vanessa considered what to say next, and then finally settled on just cutting straight to what she wanted to talk about."You're taking this whole Weiss thing pretty well."

Valeria grunted. "Am I?"

"Yep." It seemed that way, anyway, and honestly it baffled Vanessa. For all that she'd cautioned her twin to take it easy, Val's easy acceptance about teaming up with an enemy was...unsettling, to say the least.

"Watch your step," Valeria warned instead of answering, "this rung's fallen out." She cautiously moved down the ladder, wondering in an absentminded sort of way why such an apparently new building already had signs of disrepair.

Vanessa acknowledged her warning by carefully sliding down a couple rungs to bypass the danger spot, and then kept talking, tactfully ignoring the fact her sister had deliberately avoided her previous statement. "What do you think of them?" she asked her sister. "Weiss and Genesis, I mean."

Valeria paused in her descent and frowned up at her twin. "What are you talking about?" she asked, sounding completely bemused by the turn in the conversation.

"Well," Vanessa continued reluctantly, "Reeve's probably gonna have you working with Genesis for a while. I mean, assuming that he passes the probationary period and all that. I'm not so sure about Weiss," she added uncertainly. "You said he was in Deepground?"

"He wasn't just in Deepground," Valeria said darkly as she resumed her climb downwards, "he was in charge of Deepground. Their emperor or whatever."

"But Genesis said it wasn't Weiss's fault?" Vanessa offered uncertainly.

Valeria made a noncommittal sound. "Vincent said something about Hojo taking control of him through a Synaptic Net Dive," she acknowledged reluctantly. "Or… something like that. Brain-washing type stuff, maybe."

"Well," Vanessa said reasonably, "that means he wasn't responsible for what happened, right?"

Valeria just shook her head. "He was in charge of Deepground ages before Hojo got to him, Nessa. And according to the reports he wasn't exactly Mr. Friendly then. By all accounts, he was a merciless psychopath."

"Genesis said the Restrictors were pretty severe when they were in charge of Deepground," Vanessa countered. "Weiss was probably just, I dunno, acting out?"

"What is it with all this Genesis said so nonsense?" Valeria demanded, stopping her descent altogether and casting a look of furious disbelief up at her sister. "And why the hell are you defending Weiss?"

Vanessa sighed like she thought Val was being completely ridiculous. "All I'm trying to say," she said tiredly, "is that there's more to the guy than you think. To both of them, I guess."

Valeria snorted.

"I'm serious, Val. I mean, so far all he's seen of you is a WRO officer with good fighting skills and a bad temper," she added. "And there's more to you than that, right? I bet he's the same."

"It's not the same thing," she muttered, "not in the slightest." But she continued climbing down the ladder without further argument.

Vanessa rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything else, deciding that picking a fight with her emotionally volatile twin was probably best saved for the a time when they weren't on a mission.

Eventually they reached a level that had thin railing and a service door. Valeria jammed one of her blades in the seam of the door to force it open, and then they hopped off the ladder and into an empty hallway that had a very helpful You Are Here map across from the elevator shaft.

"Basement Level 4," Vanessa said, going over to peer at it and making her tone as cheerful as possible in the hopes of diffusing the black mood that had settled around them. "Nifty."

Valeria rolled her eyes, but cracked a faint smile. "Nifty's not the word I'd use, but whatever." She put her hands on her hips as she surveyed their drab surroundings. "What's down here, I wonder."

Vanessa shrugged. "Only one way to find out," she said, gesturing to the unmarked doors lining the hallway.

Valeria nodded and took a couple steps forward, but stopped suddenly as her phone rang. "Hello?" she said questioningly as she flipped it open.

A voice she was not expecting came across the line. "Valeria?"

"How did you get this number?" she demanded.

"Your sister gave it to me," Genesis said, sounding just the tiniest bit smug.

Well, wasn't that thoughtful of her...Not. "…What do you want," she asked flatly.

"We found some schematics of the building," he informed her. "I'm sending them to your phone now."

Her phone beeped twice to alert her to the new files. "Yeah, I got them. Thanks," she added grudgingly, followed by "How are things going on your end?"

"Weiss and I are heading up to the top floor," Genesis said in reply. "You?"

"Well," she said, turning on her speaker phone and checking out the schematics on her phone's screen, "according to this, there's some sort of lab down here." Which wasn't terribly surprising; everyone seemed to like keeping their labs below the ground, as if having their experiments hidden in the basement was some extra measure of security. Ridiculous, in Val's honest opinion. And she doubted there would be anything there worth seeing, anyway, not given the apparent emptiness of this entire building. Still..."We'll go check it out."

"Alright," Genesis said in agreement. "Be careful."

She rolled her eyes, even though he couldn't see it. "Don't worry," she said, trying to not sound patronizing and probably failing, "we'll be just fine. I'll call if we find anything," she tacked on as an afterthought. Then she snapped her phone shut, and together she and her sister headed towards the Justice lab.