Arc Corp time. I re-installed and played some more of Library of Ruina this weekend to prepare myself mentally for this. Wiped my save clean and began anew. Fun game, if a little punishing and difficult. Can recommend.

Cover Art: Curbizzle

Chapter 2

This was it. This was how she died.

Blake had always known she would die sooner or later – mortality tended to work like that – but she'd always assumed that it would be of old age, to a Grimm or dying in defence of her beliefs for equality for all faunuskind. Not… eaten by a sentient house while an idiot stood by poking the walls and mumbling to himself. Even in her darkest moments when all hope seemed lost, she could confidently say she didn't expect this.

"I hate you," she said. "I literally, honestly hate you."

"You can't hate me," Jaune said reasonably. "We've only just met."

"You're that incredible. You're so unlikeable that you've surpassed the negative impressions left by every other person in my life. And believe me, that's saying something."

"But I even gave you a job…"

Blake scowled his way, wondering if that was sarcasm until she saw the genuinely glum expression on his face. Great. He was an idiot on top of being… well… an idiot. He was an idiot-squared, and she was an idiot-cubed for having had any faith in him. "We're doomed," she complained. "We're going to die here."

"You should try and calm down."

"Why?" she demanded. "We're trapped inside, the walls, windows and door is next to impervious and we're going to be digested. Tell me what reason I have to feel calm."

"Because you'll consume more oxygen when you're nervous and we probably only have a limited amount left in here." Jaune looked at her, as she looked back at him flatly, and said, "I guess that's not a very calming statement, is it?"

"No. It is not."

And yet it did force a kind of quiet, helpless calm on her. Defeatism might be a better term, but with defeatism came its own bizarre and spiteful kind of courage. Blake forced herself up from her knees, determined that if she was going to die then she'd give this bastard house the worse case of indigestion ever. Whatever the cause, it was courage she could work with. "Okay. I'm better," she lied. "What do we do? You have to have some idea."

"Hmm." Jaune hummed and poked at the exposed bit of wall she'd peeled back and then attacked. There were raised welts where she'd shot it, and though they'd already healed over, they bulged and bled a little when he poked at them. "Our best bet in a situation like this is to stay calm and try to think reasonably. Anomalies aren't invincible. Except the ones that are. But usually there's a trick to dealing with them."

"What kind of trick?"

"It depends on the anomaly. Sometimes you can just keep them away from people, not touch or interact with them, and then sometimes they have their own strange rules like not working unless you consent or speak an agreement."

"Kind of a devil's deal?"

"Yeah, like that. This one might have some rule like it can only eat people who enter the house of their own choice. Or maybe that it can only kill those who pass out or are unconscious. None of the bones I saw earlier were broken or showed a fight."

"Neither were mine. Though one was stuffed in a dryer."

"They probably tried to hide in there from… well… whatever this is."

"Okay, that's terrifying," she said. "And it doesn't help us much, does it? I wasn't planning on trying to fall asleep in here. I'm not sure I could."

"It might help a little." Jaune said. He stepped back from the wall and rubbed his chin. "The Director – that's my father – always says that everything is done for a reason. If an anomaly acts in a certain way then that's usually because it has to, or because it's best for the anomaly. At least the sapient ones. If you look at the facts then there's usually a pattern to be found."

Cute story, Blake felt like saying, but she decided against it. She could snipe all she wanted – and she sure as hell wanted to – but bitterness wasn't going to get them out of here. Look at the facts and find a pattern. What does that even mean? Ugh. Forget it, I might as well try.

The house lured people into it and locked them inside. They would struggle around tyring to escape until they ran out of oxygen and passed out, at which case they would either be digested or the house itself would come and eat them. It didn't fight them because the dead bodies were found sitting down, in appliances or in the basement, and until she'd accidentally damaged it, none of the bones were broken. The deaths were for the most part gentle. Well, as gentle as death could be. The house seemed to play a waiting game, just existing until its prey passed out, but at the same time it sent out some kind of hallucination to actively hunt out and lure prey in.

"It's a camouflage predator." Blake said. Jaune looked over with a hum, prompting her to explain. "Most predators use the hunting technique that gives them the highest chance of success. Wolves hunt in packs, spiders lay traps and angler fish lure prey close enough to strike. This doesn't do any of that. It lured us in like an angler fish, caught us like a spider with its web, but it hasn't done anything since. It isn't attacking us, and it didn't attack the other prey either, even when some of them were small children. Which, given the size of the place, it shouldn't have had any trouble with."

"Of course!" Jaune thumped his fist into his hand.

Blake raised an eyebrow.

Jaune began to sweat lightly.

"You're waiting for me to finish so you can claim credit, aren't you?"

His eyes glanced aside. "No?"

"Idiot." Blake refused to smile, even if she was amused. "It means – or suggests – that the house has a reason not to attack its prey, even small and weak ones. It might not be able to, or it might be too vulnerable or weak to overpower a person."

"An anomaly this size?" Jaune asked. He interrupted himself before she could get a word in. "Ignore that. Anomalies don't have to make sense. You might be onto something, even if the house itself looks big, it's possible the anomaly isn't." He picked up the Dictaphone and began talking into it. "After deep thought, we have discovered that the house's reluctance to immediately engage us, and previous prey, may be due to an inability or weakness in its ability."

We? Nice pluralisation there. Blake rolled her eyes and continued to poke around the hallway. It all looked and felt real, even the wallpaper laid out over wood that she ran her fingers over. Good camouflage was usually utilised to avoid trouble or protect yourself. Given that she'd made it bleed already, could the house actually be susceptible to physical harm? There was that old saying about if it bleeds, you can kill it.

"I'm going to try hurting it some more," she said, drawing Gambol Shroud. Jaune announced that into the device and then gave her a thumbs up, evidently deciding he could delegate the gory task to his new employee and sit back to oversee her. "And they say manners are dead," she grumbled. "Here I go."

Gambol Shroud slashed, hacked and cut at the flesh-like material of the wall, carving great furrows into it that sloshed blood out over her hands and down her stockings. At first she tried to dodge it all, but soon she was so coated in red that it didn't seem worth the effort. The heavy cleaver's blade sank into the flesh and chipped through bone that didn't seem to have any logic, sense or structure. It would rise up, poking out the flesh, and wasn't connected to anything else or forming a skeleton. Soon, she'd cut what felt like a deep hole into it, but there was yet more flesh inside, and no sight or sound of a way out. The house began to gurgle again, and fresh blood spurted out to drench her arms.

Was she hurting it? There wasn't any way of knowing, and by the time her arms were tired enough to make her stop, she'd cut a large hole into the flesh some two feet deep, carving out a spherical hole that left a puddle of gore and nasty, fleshy lumps on the ground. "That…" she panted. "That didn't do as much as I hoped…"

"I think the human body can lose a surprising amount of skin, blood and muscle and still recover." Jaune said, inspecting the carnage she'd wrought. Lacking her night vision, he had to angle his scroll's torch into the space and turn it around to look at the damage. "It's possible that this just isn't much damage to it compared to its full size."

"You're welcome to join in and help."

"I don't have a weapon."

"You – what?" Blake looked at him like he was insane, which she wasn't convinced he wasn't. "You came out knowing you would be dealing with an anomaly and didn't bring a weapon?"

"Ah, well, it's hard to predict what weapons would be useful. If any. This could have just as easily been an object, a person-shaped entity or some kind of huge space creature that only exists in the realm of concept." He scratched his cheek and muttered, "But yeah, maybe a dumb decision. Easy to say that in hindsight."

"It's not hindsight to know you should come fight something armed!"

"Okay. Okay. Lesson learned. I'll do better next time. Geez, you're as bad as Saphron." The light of his scroll flickered and died suddenly. "Ah, crud. There goes the battery. I guess I have been stuck in here around eight hours."

Eight hours. Blake wasn't sure she could have kept as calm as he was for that long. She reached for her scroll. "You can use mine."

"It's okay," he said, bringing a small cardboard packet out his pocket. "I didn't come totally unprepared." He slid it open, removed a match and struck it against the coarse strip on the side. It burned to life quickly. "Tadah."

"You thought to bring matches but not a weapon."

"Hey, you wouldn't believe how useful matches are, and we can't all have perfect night vision." The match didn't give him much in the way of light to see with either, and he had to lean in close and hold it just under the flesh to cast any light. "Now, let's have a closer look-"

Just as he did, a spurt of blood came shooting out and doused his match and his hand. He looked so stunned, so horrified and confused at the same time, that Blake burst out laughing.

"H-Hey, not cool!" he whined, wiping his hand on his coat. He then froze. "Ah, my coat! My suit! Oh man, this stuff doesn't come cheap, and blood is a pain to wash off. Awww. How am I gong to explain this at the dry cleaners…? They looked at me weird last week for coming in covered in green slime. There's no way they'll buy this is marinara sauce."

How was she going to explain hers? Blake looked like she'd come out of a blender filled with human bodies, and then killed the people responsible. Only her face and hair was spared of crimson, and only the upper part of her hair at that. Luckily, she wasn't too squeamish about blood, or she'd have fainted and been eaten already. She continued to chuckle as Jaune brought out another match and fumbled lighting it, the job made much harder because of his now bloody fingers. Eventually, he got it, revealing a mournful pout and bloodstained hands.

"It's not funny. Suits are expensive."

"Then maybe you should wear something cheaper and that you don't care about getting dirty."

"I can't. This is the uniform. You'll have to wear one too if you're working for us," he said. "Black suits always. The coat depends on the office – ours is dark blue – but the suit must always be black. Black suit, white shirt, black tie."

"Any reason why?"

"Some," he admitted. "Suits give a lot of body cover and with gloves mean there's no skin exposed aside from the face. Some anomalies can do things to you if you touch them like burn through your skin, give you uncurable diseases or mutate you into an anomaly yourself." The blood all over Blake's hands and arms wasn't quite such a laughing matter all of a sudden. "But it's also to look important. People are more likely to trust agents in suits, or so dad says. Look like you know what you're doing, and people will think you do."

"Yes, and they might even foolishly trust you to know what you're doing."

"Exactly!" Jaune completely missed her sarcastic attack and leaned back into the hole with his new match. "Now, let's have another look-ah!" He was prepared this time and leapt back when the wall viciously twitched and expelled another gout of blood toward him. His black shoes clicked against the floor as he stepped back shielding the tiny light. "Okay, message received, I guess I'm not getting a closer look at that."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Blake grabbed his wrist and yanked the match back toward the flesh. As she expected, the visible material began to twitch and roil as it got closer, the entire house gurgling loudly again. Her eyes widened. "Fire!" she gasped. "It doesn't like fire!"

Jaune, for all his denseness, caught on quickly. "That'd make sense! It's a house – most of it is wood even if below that is flesh." He shielded the match from above and pushed it up against some of the exposed skin. The fire licked and flickered against it, and the house groaned and trembled enough to send him stumbling back. Blood poured from the wounded wall and splashed out at him again, catching the match and dousing it like the first. "Log 9!" he said excitedly. "The anomaly shows an extreme reaction to fire, indicating either an aversion to heat, fire or smoke. Either way, our next course of action is clear."

"Kill it with fire!" Blake said. "We'll need a bigger one to make a difference, though. Here." She tossed him her scroll so he could have the flashlight to see by. "Start breaking down these chairs. You said there were more bodies in the basement, right?"

"Yes. Why?"

"They might have paper, flammable clothing or other stuff on them. We're going to need a proper pyre for this."

"Right. I'll bring the wood upstairs." Jaune said. "That way it can't bleed on us to put it out like it's trying here."

"Good idea." Blake's heart was racing now, her lips pulling into a vicious snarl. They had a plan, a way out and just maybe a way to get back at this blasted house, anomaly, thing. It made all the difference. Jaune picked up a chair and smashed it on the ground and reached for another

She rushed out into the corridor in search of the basement, finding the door at the stairs, at the back where it was tallest, and it was already unlocked. It hadn't been obvious when she ran by it before to try and escape. The narrow corridor down was flanked by wood, with the stairs creaking under her. On reaching the bottom, she wished for the first time in her life that she didn't have perfect night vision.

That's a lot of bodies…

Jaune had been right to say they were heaped up on one another. The manner in which they were piled up suggested that someone had dragged them there. She didn't know if that was the anomaly or someone who got stuck inside and tried moving them to somewhere they wouldn't be in the way. Maybe the guy who died asleep on the sofa. They were still clothed, and Blake swallowed her fear and stepped up to crouch by the closest.

It was the work of at least ten minutes to rifle through the pockets of them all. Aside from some paper they could use as kindling, she found several packets of cigarettes and four lighters that would prove invaluable. One even had a packet of dust on him that she pocketed, along with as much money as she could carry.

"It's not like any of you need it anymore," she said in apology. "It doesn't feel right to take it, but a girl has to eat and afford a place to stay. Um. I hope avenging you all by destroying this nightmare house is enough to earn it."

The dead didn't reply, which should have been a given but probably wasn't now that she knew crazy things like vampires and aliens might exist. Did zombies-? No. Not the time, especially not when she was stood in the middle of them all. Blake quickly hopped out from them in case they suddenly came to life. Luckily, they did not. There seemed to be a limit on how poor her luck could be. Or, and more likely, if there was a zombie anomaly out there then it couldn't have been in here because the house and it would have killed one another by now.

The world she lived in looked a lot more complicated all of a sudden.

The big stack of firewood Jaune had made in a bedroom at the top of the staircase looked much simpler thankfully. He'd taken the wood from the chairs and wrapped it with thin sheets from the bed.

"I found dust and lighters," Blake reported. "They'll have more dust inside."

"Nice! I found a book with paper inside." He indicated the pages, torn out and scrunched up to form kindling. Blake added some of her own, then knelt and unclasped the containers on most of the lighters, pouring out dust onto the paper. "If we're right, this place might get a little uh… unstable once this begins. You might want to be ready to move quickly."

"Unstable how?"

"No two anomalies are the same. I couldn't say. I just figure if someone lit a fire in my stomach, I wouldn't be in a good mood about it."

Fair enough. Blake loosened Gambol Shroud at her side, took one of the remaining lighters and tossed the other to Jaune. It took a few clicks to get the wick lit, and she had to angle her hand to get the dust lit. Once it was, however, the heavily flammable material sparked and ate up the paper, crinkling and turning it black. It didn't take to the wood immediately, but she they kept lighting more and more until smoke was beginning to rise and the first chair leg crackled.

It was at that moment she realised starting a fire and smoke inside a creature they were trapped in might be a bad idea, especially with limited oxygen, but then she decided they'd be dead anyway if they didn't do anything. Might as well burn this whole place down with them inside than lay down and be slowly digested.

I should have stayed with Adam and the White Fang. This is what trying to be a good person gets me…

Ah, to hell with it. If she was going out, she was going out in a blaze of glory. They both were. Opening up the canister of dust she'd looted off one of the bodies, she tossed it onto the flames, grinning as the orange light reflected off her face and the flames burst high into the air. They licked at the ceiling, spilling smoke and fire across the woodwork.

"Log 10," Jaune recorded. "We've set a fire and- whoah!"

The house rocked and twisted suddenly, throwing Jaune off his feet and sending her to her knees. So much for warning her to watch out when he was going to let his guard down. "It didn't like that!" she yelled. "Don't let the fire go out!"

"I don't think we have to worry about that."

He was right. The firewood he'd stacked had spilled over when the house shook, but it was too strong to be put out by that. Flames had spread to the floorboards and the ceiling, and they were eating away at the wood, burning it black and revealing pulsing flesh beneath. Even with the limited material they had, the fire was growing quickly out of control, and the smoke was cloying under the ceiling, covering the top few inches of the room in smog.

"We should go downstairs so we don't choke," Blake said.

"Or," Jaune said, "We could pick up a brand each, run around and spread the fire even further." He was grinning now. "You know, really burn this place to the ground."

"That's the best idea I've heard from you yet."

Jaune snagged a burning chair leg and jogged to the door, steadying himself on the frame as the house rocked again. He turned left, running that way and shouting "Burn it! Burn it all! Mwahahaha!"

Childish. Immature. Blake grabbed two chair legs and lit them like torches, then turned right out the door. The rooms were likely as fake as the first, but she paused in the doorways to chuck the torches in, tossing one onto another bed where it soon caught the sheets and set them ablaze, and the last down the end of the second floor corridor to set fire to the carpets and the walls there. The house groaned again, the floorboards under them cracking and splintering up. The fleshy mass beneath writhed, pushing up from the wood.

"Don't like that, huh?" Blake stomped on one of the mounds with her heel, puncturing and spurting blood up her right leg. "That's what you get for trying to eat a faunus who's had a bad day! I was hungry, unemployed and just trying to find a missing kid for the reward money! You brought this on yourself by locking us in here!"

A loud banging noise came from downstairs. Blake's ears twitched toward it, wondering for a second if someone else had entered or, and she dreaded the answer, whether the anomaly had shown itself at last and was banging across the bottom floor. It took another slam for her to recognise what the sound truly was, though.

A door opening and slamming shut repeatedly. Blake lurched to the balcony on the second floor and leaned over so far she risked falling, just to make sure she was right. There it was, a beam of light coming in as the door slammed open and shut over and over. It was trying to get more air in, or maybe even trying to let them out so they'd stop setting fire to it. Either way, freedom beckoned.

"Jaune! The door! It's open!"

He heard. "Don't let it shut!"

Blake was already in motion. Her feet struck the staircase halfway down, her knees bent, and she launched herself at the door, slamming her shoulder into it and pinning it open. It fought her – bucking and ramming against her side – but it was just a door. It was wood. Aside from making her shoulder numb with the number of times it was hitting her, it didn't have the strength to shift her out the way. Outside, the cold air was a blessing, but the street was still deserted. Impossible, as Jaune had pointed out the city of Vale was packed with people trying to live behind the safety of the walls. There just weren't any abandoned homes to be had. Even condemned buildings were knocked down and rebuilt within a week or to.

"I've got the door!" she shouted. Jaune ran by at the top of the stairs with another torch, holding it against the walls. "Jaune! Forget it – get out of there."

"One second." He ran down the staircase but, to her frustration, doubled back toward the kitchen rather than come outside with her. "We decided to neutralise the anomaly." he said. "If we leave it alive, it'll come back and take more people – more children. I'm finishing the job. Arc Corp doesn't leave a job half done!"

He was right, damn him. In her haste to get out of there she'd forgotten that this thing, this monstrosity, had preyed on children and innocent people, putting them through hell before killing them. If they ran now and it teleported somewhere else, it might be able to put the fire out and survive. They'd likely never see it again, but they'd know what it was doing. They, she, would have to live with the guilt.

"Fine. I'll keep the door open. You burn this place down."

He flashed her a smile as he ran back to the dining room where they'd cut into the beast. His gratitude was clear. She heard the crackling fire and the wild gurgling, groaning like stone and cracking wood as the house moved and shattered its wooden disguise, trying either to shake off the burning wood or maybe just breaking it apart in its death throes. It was impossible to know which.

"Blake, please!" a familiar voice begged from behind her. She turned, eyes widening at the sight of her own mother wreathed in fire on the bottom of the steps. "Our home, Blake," Kali cried. "Your father is trapped inside!"

Shocking as it was and horrifying to see her mother's skin blistering and turning black, she didn't move. "My mom is in Menagerie," she said, able to use the cold logic to withstand the instinctual urge to recoil. Whatever it looked like, this was not Kali. "Dad too. Jaune was right – you're not exactly good with the illusion thing. I really should have noticed more things wrong with that faunus child."

It flickered and morphed again, this time into Adam, his mask gone and his face on display. Funnily enough, it lacked the SDC scar burned into his skin. It was using the image she had of Adam before he was captured and branded. He begged her to come with him, despite that the real Adam never would.

I guess Jaune was right. It's reading my mind to find people I'd respond to, but it doesn't really know how they act or what they would say. Surface reading, he called it. Like skimming my thoughts without understanding the context.

"Oh, hi dad." Jaune poked out with a wild grin, his face covered in soot. That he saw his father only proved it was different for each person. "On fire, eh? Nice look. Yeah, no, my dad wouldn't beg me to do anything. Nice try." He tossed his flaming torch inside the door, the house now merrily burning away. "That's everything."

"Will it be enough?" she asked, ignoring the faunus baby wailing on the floor on fire and burning to death. "What now?"

"Close the door and hold it shut."

Right. The house was trying to open the door to get air in and put the fires out, and they wanted to do the exact opposite. Blake slammed the door shut and pressed her hands against it, almost skidding back as it tried to open and push on her. Jaune added his own wright, wedging his shoulder against the wood and holding there. Together, they held it shut, listening through the wood as the fire spread, the house groaned and wood cracked, splintered and burst.

Behind her, the faunus child hit a high point in its wail and then disappeared, burning away to nothing. The next moment, literally the next instant, it all disappeared. Blake fell through the empty air in front of her and down into a pile of trash bags and metal garbage bins. The house was gone. The street was gone. And with the door they'd been pushing against not existing, they toppled forward to land in pile of trash bags and metal garbage bins. Jaune slammed down next to her, causing one of the bags to burst like a tumour and send rotten food spilling across the alleyway.

Despite the smell, the disgusting mess and everything else, Blake rolled onto her back and laid on the full and squishy garbage bags as if they were a pile of silk cushions. It was cold, wet and uncomfortable, all of which was a hundred times better than her life had been not ten minutes prior.

"Is… Is it over…?"

"The house vanished and the illusion died." Jaune said. He stood, inspected his suit and groaned unhappily at the state of it. The blood, the fire, the soot and the rotten food had effectively turned his outfit from a disaster into completely unsalvageable. "If it teleported or shifted to another dimension then it would have taken us with it. The only explanation for why it vanished as we were touching it is that it died."

"We killed it?"

"Yes."

Blake closed her eyes and smiled up at the starry sky. "Nice."

"There is a problem to deal with though…" Jaune said.

"I know. I know. I've been made aware of all this crazy stuff, forced myself into your secret organisation and you have to deal with that. Look, I was serious about needing a job and now that I know these… these things exist and are hunting people I'm not sure I can ever feel safe going about my life and pretending they don't."

Or going to sleep and trusting she'd wake up again. Part of her said to run, a big part, but she knew there was suddenly hundreds, maybe thousands, of monsters out there beyond the Grimm, and that she knew nothing about them. Curiosity might kill the cat, but at least it wouldn't devour her flesh like a man-eating house.

"I'll work for you if you'll have me. And I'll not say anything about what I saw."

"Oh, yeah. Right." Jaune scratched his cheek. "That's an important thing too, but not the immediate problem I was talking about."

Blake sat up among her throne of garbage. "What? Then what is the problem?"

"We're both covered in blood and ash in the middle of Vale and my office is on the other side of the city."

"Shit…"

/-/

It was a miracle they made it back to Jaune's office without starting a manhunt across the city – either for them or for the mountain of dead bodies of the victims they must have killed to produce so much blood in the first place. Jaune had lent her his coat, which was long enough to cover most of her bloodstained body and was more burned than bloody itself. Sure, they looked like two well-dressed hobos making their way home, but people had shied away from their smell rather than accused them of outright murder.

Jaune's office was a small apartment on the second floor of an apartment block and reminded her of those detective offices from the old black and white movies from Atlas. It had that frosted glass screen on the door with the words `ARC Containments Office` written on the front, and the inside was a mishmash of randomly placed furniture, the most obvious of which was a wooden desk with a chair backing onto a window on the far side, and a pair of sofas with a coffee table in the corner, presumably for guests. There was a door leading off to a kitchenette, a bedroom and – to her immense relief – a bathroom with a shower.

"Mine," she claimed, slamming the door before Jaune could argue and locking it. The water was cold, which she was practically grateful for after the hot and fetid burning house. When she came out wrapped in a towel and poked her head out the door, she found a pair of over-sized tracksuit bottoms and a white suit shirt to wear, snatched them inside and donned them before stepping out again barefoot.

Jaune was behind his desk writing on a laptop with the coat absent, his tie off and his bloody shirt untucked.

"Um. Thanks for the spare clothes," she said. "Shower's free."

"I'll take it in a minute. I have to write up a report and send it to HQ."

"On me?"

"On the anomaly. I'm kinda hoping to not mention you for as long as possible." He laughed nervously. "Dad will have my head. The report is to have a record of what the anomaly was, its mannerisms and how we beat it in case another like it ever appears. It also needs a name."

"Didn't you already give it one before?"

"The Missing Few referenced the disappearances. It's not really a good name for the anomaly after what we saw. The obvious choice would be Man-eating House but that sounds lame."

Blake's brow twitched. "It's dead. We killed it. Who cares what it's called?"

"I care. Anomalies are like deeds of great battles you've been in – employees of Arc Corp will read through this for generations to come and judge us based on our actions. I don't want them to see me as someone with no imagination."

"So, basically you want to show off to your parents?" His head ducked a little, his face flushing pink. Heh, nailed it. "Call it the Welcoming House or something mysterious like that. It tried to welcome us in and then eat us."

"Ooh. That's not a bad idea." He typed away quickly. "Good job."

She was working with him now, as crazy as this all seemed, so it didn't hurt to be useful. Blake idled around the room, looking at the backwords writing on the frosted glass door. She walked over to a nearby dresser with one of those globes on it, placed her hand on the surface and gave it a lazy spin. There was a collection of stuff nearby, including what looked like an electron microscope. Maybe that was for looking at tiny anomalies. "So, this is the Containments Office. What does that mean?"

"Each office is headed by an individual or individuals from Arc Corp." Jaune explained without looking up. "We work for the company, but we have a lot of autonomy in how we run things. Basically, we're independent but we answer to Arc Corp. Offices are like branches, but each office can do things differently depending on who runs it."

"I take it from the name that we're big on containment, then."

"Yeah. Each office has its own philosophy. Dad's is the Blades Office and focuses on annihilating every anomaly it can find. Kill on sight no matter how dangerous or harmless it might be. A lot of the others are like that, if not quite so extreme. I know some anomalies are too dangerous to live and need to be neutralised like we did tonight, but there are a lot which are harmless – even interesting. I want to try and go back to what we were before, containing and researching them. At least the ones that aren't dangerous. That's why we're called the Containments Office."

"So, we're collectors?"

"I'd prefer to say prison wardens," he said. "Anomalies are still dangerous, even the harmless ones can be abused by other people, so our job is to find and contain them before they can cause harm. The non-sapient ones don't have to be destroyed, though. Some are kinda cool. Take here for instance. I have a globe in the office where the world is literally its own world."

The spinning globe halted under Blake's fingertips. "What?"

"It's a real world," Jaune said, still not looking up. If he had, he might have seen her panicky expression. "It's crazy, I know, but it has little civilisations and people living on it. Millions of them living their lives completely unaware of the fact they are a model globe in my office. Sometimes I watch them and see what they're getting up to."

Blake yanked the microscope over and peered into it, holding the lens over the globe.

Instantly, she had a view of devastation and wildfires, cities in ruins and smoking, oceans sloshing about and having overthrown their coastlines to flood communities. The world was devastated, likely because of a very sudden increase in the planet's rotation. Tidal waves, earthquakes, devastating hurricanes and more.

"Last I checked, millions of little people lived on it," Jaune said.

Not anymore they don't… Blake thought, hyperventilating. Words like genocide danced around in her head.

"And I also have a camera that when it takes a picture, reverses the object in the picture to its physical state exactly sixty seconds ago."

Click.

Jaune looked up. "What was that?"

"Nothing," Blake said, using her body to hide the camera she'd shoved behind her back. The globe was still again, its tiny civilisations going about their day completely ignorant of the global apocalypse they had both experienced and fallen to. Blake set the camera down and took a very nervous step away from the globe and the other objects on the table which might have devastating consequences. "So, uh, you don't just leave these anomalies sitting around do you? That doesn't sound very safe."

"It's not usually a problem since I work here alone. But I guess I should put some warning labels out or something for you. Some of them can have pretty hefty costs and consequences to using them."

Blake froze. "Does the camera?"

"Yep."

He didn't elaborate.

Blake began to sweat.

"So, uh, what's its cost? Out of curiosity."

"Every picture you take reverses the object in the frame sixty seconds but ages the user the same amount. That doesn't sound like a lot on its own, but keep in mind it doesn't exactly tell you that. I found it being used by a photographer in Vale who looked like he was eighty years old and was dying of organ failure. He was nineteen."

Okay, so she was sixty seconds older. Not too bad on its own, but she made a mental note not to touch anything in the office without asking him first what it did. "Is the sofa safe?" she asked. "Can I sit on it, or will it eat me? Does it do anything horrific, bizarre or unusual?"

"It heats up."

"Because it's alive? What will the heat cost me?"

"Nothing. Because it's a sofa I bought with heating elements installed in it for cold nights," Jaune said with a rather bemused expression. "Not everything is an anomaly."

"Yeah, well, I don't know what is and what isn't!" Blake snapped and sat down. It was comfortable enough that she rotated and laid down across it, dangling her legs over the edge and resting her head on one of the arms. "Can I sleep here tonight?"

"Don't you have your own place?"

"No."

"Hngh. Fine. I'll see if I can get an advance on your wages. I'll have to tell dad anyway," he muttered under his breath. "And then we'll have to get you a uniform as well."

"Are there rules about not bringing people into the company?"

"No. Saphron runs the Fist Office and recruited Terra, her girlfriend, and my sister Coral runs the Secrets Office and has, like, three employees. Every office can choose how it wants to run itself independently. It's just… well… I'm a little less… it's not that I'm not trusted," he said, "but… well… not as respected? A little less believed in?"

"You're incompetent."

"Not the word I was looking for!" he complained. "But that's probably how they see it. Dad really wasn't keen on me running my own office and only agreed if he could test me after a few months. Now he'll probably want to test you as well."

"What kind of test?"

"Dad is… intense." The way Jaune said it made her think that intense meant literally on fire, not just mildly adventurous. "It'll be a test of competency, but how he conducts that isn't something I can predict. I'd just expect it to be equal parts harrowing and horrifying."

"And if I fail?"

"Don't."

"But if I do."

"Blake, I don't want you to think about failing. Considering the possibility of failure is opening yourself up to the idea of failure, and that only makes it a certainty." He gripped a fist her way and smiled. "Believe in yourself! Believe that you cannot possibly fail and you are sure to succeed!"

That was a nice pep talk but she couldn't help but notice he still hadn't told her what fate would befall her if she failed. "He's going to kill me if I fail, isn't he?" she said. "To keep anomalies and Arc Corp secret."

"Oh silly." Jaune laughed. "Dad won't kill you."

Blake heaved a sigh of relief. "Good."

"Because you're not going to fail whatever test he sets!"

"Jaune?"

"Yes?"

"I hate you and your family."

"Yeah…" Jaune laughed awkwardly. "That's fair."

Welcome to the madhouse Blake. I bet that train full of exploded SDC employees is looking mighty fine now. On the bright side, I bet Blake in a suit would look good. If you're interested in the outfits I'm basically taking ideas from Library of Ruina for them. Jaune is wearing an outfit similar to "Zwei Association". If you type that into google images you'll get an idea for it.

Next Chapter: 25th April

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