“You have been stirring up quite a bit of trouble, haven’t you?” Salem asked.

Akelarre had the decency to give her adoptive mother a sheepish smile. “Not too much,” she said. “I only got into two altercations with the police, robbed one place, and maybe assaulted a...” she paused and tried to remember how many gangsters she threatened to have her grimmsects eat. “A few gangsters.”

Salem’s sigh was almost heartwrenching.

They were in an antechamber of Salem’s throne room, just a little area with some seats that were close enough together that when Salem reached out Akelarre only had to shuffle sideways a bit to get into Salem’s headpatting range.

“What am I going to do with you?” Salem asked, a note of exasperation in her voice. “If you weren’t giving Ozma such a headache through your actions I might be tempted to have you pull back. But I don’t want to curb your freedom just because of my own worries.”

“It’s not so bad,” Akelarre said, one eye going half lidded as Salem began running her long fingers against her scalp. “I’ve got most of the criminals in the city cowed already. Just need to give them direction now, and maybe make a few examples and we’re set. Then it’s all about maintenance over time and keeping things disciplined.”

“Perhaps a new mission is in order, then?” Salem asked. “It wouldn’t do for you to go around Vale like some sort of tourist, or perhaps treating the city like a zoo for your own amusement.”

“Well, I had that petshop idea,” Akelarre said.

“It would require a lot of work to turn humanity docile enough for them to accept your pets, I’m afraid,” Salem said. “There are other ways... how would you feel about ruling over Vale proper?”

“Why would I want that?” she asked.

Salem’s shrug was a languid motion. “One part entertainment, another part the ability to rule over a proper population once more. The amount of drama and infighting humans can get up to is terribly amusing. They will go so far just to earn a moment of your appreciation. Also, I always found that increasing taxes without rhyme or reason to be terribly amusing.”

“Mom, you’re beginning to sound like a Disney villain again,” Akelarre said.

“And I still do not know what that means,” Salem pointed out.

“I’m going to miss you,” Akelarre said.

Salem’s hands stopped their slow massaging motions. “You could stay,” the Queen said.

Akelarre shrugged one shoulder. “I could, but I do want to see my friends, and it feels wrong, somehow, to not be in the thick of things.”

“That is a rather horrifying thing to hear from you,” Salem said. “I’m afraid that if things aren’t interesting you’ll be sure to make them so. I do intend to keep some humans around, you know.”

Akelarre rolled her eyes and puffed out her cheeks. She would have been a bit more indignant if there wasn’t a ring of truth to Salem’s words. “I won’t depopulate Vale,” she promised.

“See that you don’t,” Salem said. “Though if the choice is between your safety and that of the city, do recall that you are worth more than any number of humans.”

“Mom, you can’t say that,” Akelarre said.

Salem actually smiled. Or at least her lips twitched upwards at the corners. “Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I certainly have.” The Queen gestured and a shadow flitted into the room, only noticeable because of a flash of white in the darkness.

Akelarre blinked after the creature, but never caught sight of it, only the envelope that appeared in Salem’s outstretched hand. “This is a letter,” Salem said as she handed it to Akelarre. It was a vellum rectangle, the only discerning mark a crimson seal at its front and a fine, almost invisible, tracery of golden gilt along its edges. “I would appreciate it if you could have it delivered to Ozma.”

“Can do,” Akelarre said before she climbed to her feet. “What was that shadow thing?” she asked, searching the room even as she stretched.

“One day I’ll have to teach you a little magic. We must see if you have the gift for it,” Salem said as she stood. “In the meantime, do allow your Queen to have some secrets.”

“Magic sounds handy,” Akelarre said. “Do I get a witch hat?”

The two women stood close to each other for a few long moments, both waiting for the other to move first. It was Akelarre who gave in and took a step forward, arms rising to wrap around Salem’s waist and pull the queen into a tight hug. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”

“I will be looking forward to it,” Salem said.

***

“Are you ready to go?” Akelarre asked as she slid into the main chamber at the base of the Spire.

Velvet was sitting on a suitcase, hands between her knees and head tilted back to stare at the ceiling. Her ears perked towards Akelarre before she turned to stare with wide brown eyes. “Um, yes.”

Akelarre smiled at her friend as she got closer, resisting the urge to tug at the long, floppy ears that were still twitching every few seconds. “Neat. I got my Grimmsects to load most of the stuff into the bullhead, we only need to bring your bags and we’re set to head off.”

Velvet climbed to her feet, then bent back down to heft up her suitcase. “Okay. Should I, um, say goodbye to your mom?” Velvet asked.

Akelarre tilted her head to one side as she considered Velvet. The rabbit faunus still looked a little nervous, but less so than that morning. For all that, there was no doubt in Akelarre’s mind that Salem had left a mark on the girl. “Nah, it should be okay.” The little sigh of relief that escaped Velvet didn’t go unnoticed.

“So, we’re going straight back to Vale?” Velvet asked as she followed Akelarre out of the tower and into the warm afternoon air.

“Hrm, not quite. We’re going to stop next to Vale first. There’s someone I want to talk to before we get back to the city. We should be back well before dark though. You won’t have to worry about missing classes tomorrow or getting in too late.”

“That’s fine,” Velvet said. “Who are we meeting? If, if you don’t mind the question.”

Suppressing a sigh, Akelarre slowed down so that she was next to Velvet, shoes still crunching on the gravelly ground as the pair moved towards the Bullhead landing area where their ride waited. All around them, more and more Grimmsects poured out of the Spire, most of them flyers, but some of the bigger ones hefting nets filled with squirming insects that were no bigger than closed fists.

“Velvet?” Akelarre asked.

“Yes?” Velvet’s instant reply came without stuttering, but the rabbit faunus was still fidgety next to Akelarre.

“You know that you’re my friend, right?”

Velvet swallowed and nodded convulsively. “Yes?”

Akelarre shook her head and stopped. Velvet took one more step before she too froze on the spot. “No Velvet,” Akelarre said. She raised a hand to touch Velvet’s shoulder, then reconsidered and let it drop. “I’m not really good at making friends,” she admitted. “But I thought we were getting close. And I know that you’re a bit shy, and that’s okay. It’s cute even, but I’d like to think that we’re close enough that you wouldn’t mind, you know, talking to me. I...” Akelarre let out a breath that was just shy of a sigh. “What I’m trying to say, is that you don’t have to be afraid of asking me anything, okay?”

“I, okay,” Velvet said.

“Really.”

“Okay,” Velvet repeated. She looked towards the bullhead, then back at Akelarre before her shoulders slumped. “I’m not really good at this either,” she said.

Akelarre placed both hands on her hips and glared at a point just above Velvet’s shoulder. “Fine, then we can both be bad at it, as long as we’re bad at it together, okay?”

Velvet stifled a sudden giggle behind a hand, but nodded. “Okay,” she agreed.

***

The flight had been uneventful. At least, everything after the take-off had been. Having a swarm that could blot out the sun hovering before and behind and above them was a little nerve wracking for Velvet at first, but it became obvious soon enough that Akelarre was making sure, somehow, that the Grimm didn’t fly directly into their path and that they kept a safe distance from their craft.

It was a calm flight, mostly.

Akelarre had started talking to fill the silence a few minutes in, mostly about the kinds of Grimmsects she had made and brought along. It was surprisingly soothing, hearing her... her friend talk about what were essentially crimes against humanity that she had crafted and imagined with the express purpose of causing as much mayhem as possible in as many creative ways as she could imagine.

Akelarre’s mind, Velvet decided, was a dark and scary place.

“We’re getting close,” Akelarre said as she straightened in her seat. She pointed to a small town nestled in a valley even as the swarms of Grimm insects around them started to disperse, most flowing down in huge tornado-like columns towards the forests below.

Velvet slowed down the Bullhead, cautious of both their speed and the need to find a place to land. Akelarre, meanwhile, was pointing towards a low of large houses set on a cliffside overlooking the small village. “It’s that one,” she said. “Next to the house Neo and I robbed.”

Velvet filed that for when she had her next existential crisis and pulled the Bullhead in for a vertical landing on the backyard of an estate that had probably cost someone millions of lien.

The Bullhead touched down with a jarring lurch and Velvet winced at the impact, but nothing seemed to be broken and the craft were made for a bit of hard use. She figured that it was probably not damaged.

“I found Cinder,” Akalerre declared. “She’s... sleeping.”

“Who is Cinder?” Velvet asked as she started to unbuckle herself with one hand while the other shut off the machine.

“Oh, she’s the person I wanted to meet. She works for my mom.”

“Ah, like mister Tyrian?” she asked.

Akelarre paused in the act of moving out of her seat. “Kinda, but less... everything.”

Velvet understood. Mister Tyrian was a lot of many things.

Akelarre hopped out of the Bullhead, then turned to give Velvet a hand. She took it, though she really didn’t need Akelarre’s help to jump down three feet.

Akelarre was sporting a grin as she grabbed Velvet’s hand and started pulling her towards the mansion, trampling across a manicured lawn without a second glance. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to Emerald and Mercury too. They’re Cinder’s minions.”

“Minions?” That was alarming. Nice people didn’t have minions. Or work for Salem, Queen of the Grimm, or live in mansions positioned in just the right way to overlook an otherwise poor town from above.

Akelarre didn’t answer Velvet’s questions, instead leading her around a small garden path and past a pretty little gazebo until they were in the backyard proper of the mansion. There was, in fact, a pool and a stone terrace, a bubbling hot tub sitting right next to it and on a wooden patio that reached all the way towards the house, was a row of beach chairs.

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“Cinder!” Akelarre called.

The woman who could only be Cinder was probably one of the prettiest girls Velvet had ever met. Long, smooth legs with just a bit of a tan to them leading to a torso that showed off abs that would make any huntress proud and a bust barely contained by a sky blue bikini. She would have been smoking hot, if her head wasn’t tilted back, mouth wide open and drool slowly leaking out of one corner while deep rumbling snores escaped her with every breath.

“She’s still asleep?” Akelarre asked.

“I guess,” Velvet agreed.

There was the thump-thump of someone running towards them and the couple turned in time to find a green-haired girl rushing onto the patio with wide eyes and a hint of panic in her gaze. Then she locked onto Akelarre and the panic twisted into an expression Velvet couldn’t even begin to decipher. “What are you doing here?” the girl said before adding, “Ma’am.”

“I’m here to talk to Cinder, but she’s sleeping,” Akelarre said over a particularly loud snore.

The green-haired girl looked at the woman that Velvet was beginning to suspect was her boss, stared for a moment longer than might have been appropriate, then pulled out a scroll. A couple of familiar shutter sounds later she was back to staring at her and Akelarre. “Give us a minute.”

Akelarre only had to tap Velvet on the shoulder and nod towards the house for the other girl to get the message and follow her into the mansion.

They navigated the huge home until they found one of the living rooms, this one occupied by a bored Mercury Black who was doing his best to pass the time while staring into the colourful abyss of a television screen. The cartoon playing was showing a few huntsmen in colourful garb killing cartoonish Beowolves with reckless abandon.

The boy looked up when she walked in, then continued watching his show for the three seconds it took for his brain to process what he had seen. With a lurch and a jump, he was out of the sofa and standing ramrod straight. “Ah, shit, uh, I mean, hello, Princess Akelarre, miss.”

Akelarre gave him a wave. “Hey Mercury. How are you?” she asked over the noise coming from the television.

“Die, foul monsters!” the knight on screen screamed as he cleaved an Ursa in two with a swing of his mighty cartoonishly large sword. The Grimm exploded into family-friendly, bloodless giblets.

“Hey,” he said as he discreetly bent down and picked up the remote. His thumb twitched on the volume control, but all that did was make a box will appear on the screen with numbers that rose along with the noise of Grimm pleading for the good guys not to slaughter them.

“I made some new bugs, would you like to see them Mercury?” Akelarre sked in a tone that was half innocent and half very much not.

The silver haired boy glanced both ways, as if seeking escape before replying with the tone of a person who knows they are giving the wrong answer, but feels that the alternative would be worse; "Ah... Nooo?"

“Grimm are for dying!” An enthusiastic child screamed before tossing a grenade into a pile of Beowolves. The Grimm all stopped to stare at the explosive with wide, idiotic eyes a moment before it exploded in their faces and left a few steaming, wolf-shaped platters of meat behind.

Mercury hurriedly pressed the power button and the television shut off with a click-humm. “So, tell me about your new bugs?” He asked.

“Well,” Akelarre started as a ear-to-ear grin crawled across her face. “I call them hugglebugs. They’re like spiders, only they can fly. Also, they can spread sleeping dust around them that makes you feel really good. Oh, and their basically built from the ground up to be really good at moving into people’s beds and hugging them while they sleep. Did you want to see one?”

“Um,” he said.

Akelarre waved whatever his response would be away. “Don’t worry. I was planning on staying here tonight. I can let one into your room at some point. It’ll be a surprise! I do love waking up with a nice big person-sized spider purring into my chest. It feels really nice.”

Mercury was not living up to his family name as his skin turned paler and paler with every word. Velvet had a hand pressed over her mouth and her shoulders moved with suppressed laughter.

Just as Akelarre suspected the boy was going to go have a sit, the soft thuds of footsteps behind her had her turning around in time to see Cinder, now wearing a loose button-up shirt over her swimsuit, glide into the room with the careless grace of a catwalk model.

The older woman smiled at her, eyes sparkling with reserved intelligence. “Akelarre. Emerald told me you had arrived. I’m sorry if I was a little indisposed. No one called ahead.”

Akelarre smiled right back. “No problem, Cinder. You looked really tired. I wouldn’t have pegged you for a snorer. You must be working so hard to need to take a nap at noon like that.”

The two women smiled at each other, pretty smiles, with lots of teeth.

“I have been working hard,” Cinder said lightly. “And how about you? Still dragging Roman and that little Neo girl around on hijinks?”

“Oh, no, we’re done with that,” Akelarre said. “We’re now in nominal control of the Vale underground. We just need to make it official, as it were.”

There was the slightest twitch at the corner of Cinder’s eye. “Well, well, you have been busy,” she said. “So, who is your companion?”

Wrapping an arm over Velvet’s shoulder, Akelarre turned the demure girl around to face Cinder. “This is Velvet, she’s my friend.”

Cinder bowed to Velvet. Not deep, just an inclination of the shoulders and head, but a sign of respect nonetheless and Akelarre allowed herself to relax a little. She didn’t want to be enemies--not quite enemies, maybe the word would be antagonistic--with Cinder. There was definitely something sister-like about the older girl that Akelarre didn’t know how to pin down.

It was nice. Not perfect, not great, but nice. A kind of friendly rivalry for Salem’s attention that she could really get behind as long as it didn’t go too far. And as long as she was winning too.

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Velvet,” Cinder said. “You seem far calmer than most friends Akelarre has made.”

“Thank you,” Velvet said, returning to bow with just a hint of awkwardness in her motion. “Akelarre is a really nice girl, and, um, a good friend.”

“Hrm, yes, I’m sure,” Cinder said. “So, should I ask how you two met? Did you rob anyone together yet?”

Akelarre suppressed a wince before Velvet had time to give her a curious look. “Nothing like that. Velvet’s a student at Beacon. Actually, she should be going back before it gets too late. But I wanted to talk to you, too. I think I could use your help with a few things.”

“I see,” Cinder said. “Perhaps Emerald could fly Velvet back into Vale? She is a passably good pilot and it would give us the time we need to talk.”

“Send Mercury,” Emerald said almost immediately. She gave Akelarre a look that failed to be inconspicuous, then shied away.

“I don’t mind,” Mercury said. “We can go together. In fact, we should go now. It would be a real shame to leave too late and have to spend the night in Vale. Real shame.”

Cinder met Akelarre’s gaze and as one they rolled their eyes. “Sure, you can both escort Velvet back,” she finally said. “That is, if you don’t mind, Velvet?”

“Ah, I don’t,” the rabbit faunus said with a shake of the head. “My things are already in the Bullhead.”

“Then all that’s left is to say goodbye, I guess,” Akelarre said. She raised her arms a little and tilted her head to one side.

With a small smile, Velvet stepped into Akelarre’s hug and wrapped her arms around Akelarre’s waist. It didn’t last for more than a heartbeat before she pulled back, but Akelarre would take what she could get.

“Bye,” Velvet said.

“Bye,” Akelarre replied.

She watched her friend leave the room, trailing after Mercury and followed by a rather dejected Emerald on the way out. Her bugs, the normal, non-Grimm ones, kept track of the trio as they moved through the house and out the side.

“So, did you want to go somewhere more comfortable to talk?” Cinder asked.

“Not particularly. Did you want to wear something more comfortable to talk?” she replied.

Cinder flashed her a dangerous smile. “Not particularly,” she said before sitting at one end of the couch Mercury had occupied. “You needed my help with something?”

“Kinda,” Akelarre admitted as she flopped onto the far end of the couch. “I have been getting some results taking over Vale’s underworld, but it started to cost me a whole lot of Grimmsects. So Velvet and I ran back to the Grimmlands to make more. That’s not what I need help with though. I took out the Knights. A group of thugs and sellers, the biggest group in Vale. The Suits work for me now. Or, well, they still work for Junior, but he might be kinda sorta a little afraid of me. Don’t know why. Never did anything to him.”

“I’m sure,” Cinder said flatly.

“Uh-huh. Anywho, Tuesday evening, all the leaders of the Knights various, um, sub-gangs I guess you’d call them, are going to meet at the The Vale View Luxury Dust Hotel.”

One of Cinder’s delicate eyebrows rose. “And you want to crash their party?”

“Crash it?” Akelarre asked before shaking her head. “No, no. I’m the one that set it all up. Well, Roman helped. But basically it’ll be a meeting to lay down the new laws, as it were. You know, scare them into submission, threaten them with fates worse than death, then show them the carrot of how good things can be if they just follow your lead. The usual.”

“I see,” Cinder said as she shuffled closer to the edge of her seat. “And you want me to help? I am rather good at speech writing, if that’s what you want. Or do you just need another pretty girl following at your heels?” the last was delivered with a straight face and no inflection, but Akelarre still got the impression that Cinder wasn’t pleased with the idea.

“No, no, I want you to be the carrot to my stick. I scare them, and you offer them a deal they won’t want to refuse.”

Cinder considered this for a moment. “It won’t take up too much of my time?” she asked.

“Hrm, not too much.” Akelarre said. “You might have less time to work on your tan.”

Cinder didn’t even have the courtesy of blushing.