A/N: (Updated: January 25, 2025) Hey, guys! Sorry for the long hiatus, but my grandpa fell and broke his hip last June, and after a series of absolutely HORRIFIC events that followed for the next four months, he ultimately wound up dying in October due to medical negligence. That's the Cliff Notes version, absolute bare bones of what happened from June to October last year. Verrrrrry long story to list all the details, so I won't bother you guys with that. I was very close with him, and needless to say, him passing fucked up my brain REAL bad. And my motivation to write went right down the toilet. And then the holidays kicked in at work, and shit was crazy from then until now so no time to write then, either. So hopefully I got my mojo back now and should be up and running again. No guarantees, but I'll try. Enjoy! :) \m/

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Disclaimer: Me no own ASOUE. No creative disclaimer today. I spent all my creativity on this chapter :(

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Chapter 15:
First Impressions
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"You're Quigley Quagmire?" Violet managed to choke. "But…you're dead."

"We heard you perished in a fire," Klaus said, equally as surprised.

So Duncan and Isadora did tell them I died. Well. I can't wait to prove them wrong…wherever they were. I smiled at their bewilderment. "No, I survived," I said. "And I've been looking for my siblings ever since."

"But how did you survive?" Violet asked. "Duncan and Isadora said that the house burned to the ground."

"It did," I said. Already, I could feel the heat of the fire again, and my face began to burn. Or was that the cold air? I didn't know. Visions of our house aflame and Mother stuffing me into the tunnels underground came rushing back to me, and instantly, my stomach flipped. Only dementia could make me forget that day. I looked at the ground, then at the waterfall. "I suppose I should start at the beginning." No! Don't cry! Not now! Violet's watching! I swallowed my tears back and sighed. "We were in our library one night. Mother and Father had just returned from Peru, apparently after breaking out of a prison, and I was looking on our globe for another place I could map out. They were talking to each other quietly about how your house burned down, and Isadora and I tried asking about it. They wouldn't tell us, so when they put us to bed that night, I snuck downstairs into the library and read The Daily Punctilio article about it. Mother caught me, then brought me into the kitchen to make me her hot cider, which makes people drowsy when they drink it. I got tired from it, and as I was getting ready to go to bed, we heard a loud crash. When we went to investigate it, we found that the house was on fire. She led me into the library and lifted a corner of the rug. There was a secret door underneath. She told me to wait down below while she fetched my siblings, and she left me there in the dark. I remember hearing the house falling to pieces above me, and the sound of frantic footsteps, and my siblings screaming. Before long, I fell asleep on the floor and slept until morning." I threw my mask down on the ground and looked at Violet and Klaus. "But she never came back. Nobody came back, and when I tried to open the door, something had fallen on top of it and it wouldn't budge."

"How did you get out?" Klaus asked.

"I walked," I said. "When it became clear that no one was gonna rescue me, the lights had come on, and I realized I was in a sort of passageway. There was nowhere else to go, so I started walking." I sighed, looking down at what used to be a tiled floor. Using whatever courage wasn't spent on these past few months, I looked up at Violet. She looked moved by my story, more than I thought she'd be. Or was that discontentment with the freezing temperature? I don't know, but I was positive it was the first one. But judging by her rosy cheeks, I wouldn't be too far off if she was just interested in getting out of the wind and near an improvised campfire. "I've never been so frightened in my life, walking alone in some passageway my parents had kept secret. I couldn't imagine where it would lead."

Violet and Klaus looked at each other. "And where did it lead?" Violet asked.

"Judging by the names on the walls, it led to many places, but the one I wound up at was the house of a herpetologist, Dr. Montgomery."

"Uncle Monty's house!" Klaus breathed with a surprised grin. "He was our guardian until Count Olaf arrived, disguised as––"

"As a lab assistant. I know. His suitcase was still there. Jacques showed me."

Violet and Klaus's eyes widened, looking at each other again. "Jacques Snicket?" Violet said.

"You knew him?" Klaus asked, stunned.

"Yeah, I did. He was my mentor," I said. "He was looking for you guys."

"Looking for us? Why?" Violet said.

"He said you guys might know the answer to one of the headquarters' Vernacularly Fastened Door codes," I said, then gave them a crooked smile. "And he was right. But he also wanted to find you for another reason. Something about if something happened to you guys, we'd lose this war."

"War? What war?" Klaus asked.

"He didn't tell me," I said, shaking my head. "But it has to do with V.F.D.."

Violet and Klaus shared another glance, looking as though they'd just eaten a lemon. Clearly, what I said wasn't sitting well with them, and to be honest, it wasn't sitting well with me, either. But, I was merely repeating what Jacques told me, and I felt that they needed to know.

"Jacques's dead," Klaus said softly. "He was murdered in the Village of Fowl Devotees while we were staying there looking for Duncan and Isadora."

"I saw that in the paper," I said, then shook my head at what I'd lost. "I read that you guys are on the run, too. It said you murdered him."

Violet and Klaus's eyes went wide. "You don't believe that do you?" Violet squeaked.

"No! Of course not!" I said at once, my head snapping in her direction. God, Quigley, way to upset the applecart! I scolded inwardly. Instantly, my mind went code red and began fishing for the right words to say to put her mind at ease. I didn't want to make her any more frightened than she already was. "I know you guys didn't do it, and I sure as hell know that my siblings didn't do it, either." Speaking of... "A volunteer named Jacquelyn Scieszka said that Duncan and Isadora escaped with you guys. Do you know where they are?"

"We don't," Violet admitted. "But they're safe. They escaped Count Olaf in a self-sustaining hot air mobile home. We helped them."

"We were hoping to find one of our parents here," Klaus said. "But we're glad we found you."

"I'm glad I found you guys, too," I said. "Jacques would be happy." I thought for a minute. No. My mission wasn't complete. There was still Sunny to find. "Violet, you said Sunny was traveling with a bunch of dangerous people. Do you know where they are?"

"Someplace nearby," Violet said, looking up at the towering peak next to us. "She's with Count Olaf, and Olaf wanted to find the headquarters, too."

My gaze intensified. Him. The one who started this whole mess with the Baudelaires. The one I wanted to choke for all the things he'd done to her...er, them. He was here, he was holding Sunny captive, and I was going to change all that. Right now. I had no doubt in my mind that he had something to do with the destruction of the V.F.D. Headquarters. I thought back to that sinister man and woman I encountered on the trail two days ago. They had something to do with this, I could feel it. Maybe Count Olaf was in cahoots with them. Maybe all three of them burned it to the ground. That's probably why I hadn't encountered any snow gnats on my way up. The smoke from the fire had deterred them all. It was another thing on my list for him to pay for.

"Maybe Olaf was the one who burned this place down," I said, scowling around at the vast field of ashes.

"I don't think so," Klaus said, shaking his head. "He wouldn't have had time to burn this whole place down. We were right on his trail. Plus, I don't think this place burned down all at once.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"It's too big," Klaus said. "If the whole headquarters were burning, the sky would be covered in smoke."

"That's true," Violet agreed. "That much smoke would arouse too much suspicion."

Smirking, I looked up at Mount Fraught, hoping to find some answers in the four drafts that had begun to blow, cutting so deep through my layers that I felt its icy breath on my skin. Unfortunately, I'd found none, but I did find something else. A plume of thick green smoke was billowing up into the cloudy sky from the peak's summit. "Where there's smoke, there's fire," I said.

Violet and Klaus looked at me, and when they found me looking up, they followed my gaze.

"That's odd," Klaus said.

"It's a Verdant Flammable Device," I said. "There's someone at the top of the waterfall, sending a signal."

"Yes, but who?" Violet asked.

"Maybe it's a volunteer who escaped from the fire," Klaus said. "They're signaling to see if there are any other volunteers nearby."

"Or it could be a trap," I said grimly. "They could be luring volunteers up to the peak in order to ambush them. Remember, the codes of V.F.D. are used by both sides of the schism."

"It hardly seems like a code," Violet said. "We know that someone is communicating, but we don't have the faintest idea who they are or what they're saying."

"This's what it must be like when Sunny talks to people who don't know her very well," Klaus said thoughtfully.

We were quiet for a moment. "Well, whether it's a volunteer or a trap, it might be our only chance to find our sister," Violet said.

"Or Duncan and Isadora," I said, my heart picking up the pace at the thought of seeing them at the top. "Let's signal back." I took off my backpack and began digging through it for the Verdant Flammable Devices Jacques got me. I pulled a small green tube out of the box and set it on the ground.

"How are we going to light these without matches?" Klaus asked.

"Watch," I said, casting a sneaky smile at Violet. I pulled out my spyglass, twisted the rings to the right configuration, and pointed the tiny red laser at the tube. Within seconds, the Verdant Flammable Device erupted into flames, and an identical thick, dense cloud of green smoke wafted into the air with the assistance of the four drafts.

Violet and Klaus's eyebrows rose in astonishment at the trick up my sleeve. I stepped back a bit to avoid getting gassed, and all three of us stared up at the other plume with baited breath. One minute crawled by. Two. Three.

Suddenly, the other plume choked and the remains of the smoke dissipated in the wind, losing at its own game. I looked at the Baudelaires for an answer, but they merely looked back at me, silently demanding the same thing.

"The smoke went out," Klaus said. "Maybe the Verdant Flammable Device burnt out."

"Or maybe the person signaling got caught," I said, praying desperately that it was the first option.

Violet looked down and sighed. "This isn't working."

"What isn't working?" I asked.

"We still don't know who's up on the peak, or why they were signaling us, and now the signal has stopped, but we still don't know what it means."

"Maybe we should extinguish our Verdant Flammable Device, too," Klaus said.

I nodded. Violet was right; this wasn't working, and the mysteries kept piling up, almost to the point where they were going to crush me. Not waiting for a confirmation, I stomped on the Verdant Flammable Device, and just like that, the four drafts yanked our plume in all different directions and I could finally breathe again. Thank God. Any more sulfur and rotten meat in my nose and I was going to throw up. Hands on my hips, I scoped out our surroundings with a much more careful eye, figuring out how to proceed.

"We have to get up there," Klaus said firmly.

Thanks, Klaus. Glad I'm not alone here. The suspense is killing me, too. The only obstacle in our way was how to get up there. I groaned inwardly. There was only one way to get up there, and I was not looking forward to it. "It's a long way to the top," I said, staring up the mountain with them. "We have to go back through the Vernacularly Fastened Door, down the Vertical Flame Diversion, and hike the same route the Snow Scouts are taking."

"There's a more direct way to the top," Violet said, pulling a black satin ribbon out of her pocket.

"No, there's not," I told her, hating myself for crushing her optimism. "Look at the map." I took my notebook out of my coat pocket and flipped it open to the page with my map of the trail I hiked when I first got here.

"Look at the waterfall," Violet said.

I flinched. Is she alright? Is she not seeing what I'm seeing? I see a wide, massive wall of ice, elevator not included. Maybe hypothermia had backhanded her when I wasn't looking. Not saying she was dumb, not at all, I'm just saying I wish I could see what she sees. I'm sure it was something to behold. I looked at her for some clarification, but all I got was a smile. A sneaky one. Cheeks burning, I tipped my head. I don't know what it was about her hair being tied up and giving me that smile, but it was driving me wild.

And I loved it.

I looked to find Klaus grinning from ear to ear. Seriously, what did these two know that I didn't? Can someone please enlighten me here? He looked over at me, probably sensing my confusion. "When my sister ties her hair up, it means she's thinking of an invention."

My eyes widened, and my attention was back on Violet. Was she...going to ad hoc her way up there? "You're gonna invent something to climb the waterfall?" I breathed, unable to fathom what was going on.

"I sure am," Violet said, that smile still on her face.

"How?" I asked. "There's nothing here to build anything with."

"You'll see," Violet said, and with that, she headed back into the headquarters' ruins.

A grin was now on my face as Klaus and I followed her. I was about to see Violet Baudelaire in her natural habitat. I was about to witness the unbelievable power of her intellect, a skill so sharp that it had cut right through Count Olaf's plans time and time again. A gift not to be messed with. She was about to build something out of nothing to get up the waterfall without any climbing gear. And I was about to see Jacques's tall tales with my own eyes.

I was about to witness history.