Sitting at the slightly open door, Violet peeked through the small gap to look into the alley on the other side. It was a fairly narrow space, far too small for anything larger than a bike to go through. There were a few backdoors to some of the buildings here, as well as an occasional trash can, but otherwise it was fairly empty.

Empty, except for a slightly bloodsoaked lump, wrapped in hide sitting in the middle of the alley.

It wasn’t the cleverest of traps, but it seemed pretty apparent that many of the mutated beasts were willing to take on bigger risks in the name of acquiring Aether than might otherwise be reasonable.

Violet scooted back from the door as she saw one of the mice approach the entrance to the alley, sniffing curiously. Hesitantly, suspiciously, it started making its way toward the meat, pausing to glance around every so often.

Nevertheless, it continued on. Maneuvering down the alley while displaying an abundance of caution, as it neared the meat it stopped, just short of another open door. It was open such that it couldn’t see inside, but the creature was wary. It turned back to the bundle on the ground.

She tensed, watching it. If it’s like the others, then–

The creature dashed, racing past the open door, deftly grabbing the small bundle, and moving to exit out of the alley before the trap could be sprung.

Unfortunately for it, this wasn’t their first rodeo.

“Now!” she shouted into the alley, stepping out of her door.

At either end, other doors opened up, and her party members stepped out, blocking the escape routes. The little beast ran valiantly, desperately—

And bounced off Grant’s shield, back into the alley. The bundle of meat bounced beside it, unraveling a bit as the party surrounded the beast. Looking up at them, face cast in their shadows, it whimpered.

Violet crouched down beside it, and whispered to it. “It’s okay little guy, we’re not going to hurt you.”

On the other side of their little circle, Kevin muttered “Yet,” under his breath.

She frowned at him, and he grinned smugly back. She turned back to the mouse, which was roughly the size of a house cat. “I’m not going to hurt you. Now,” she removed a cloth wrapping from her hand, revealing a rough, bleeding cut along her palm. “Open up.”

Ramy and Frank knelt down, grabbing the rodent's limbs and pinning it down. Violet grabbed its snout, forcing the mouth open. Quickly, she moved her hand over and squeezed some blood into it against its protests. While she did this, she started speaking in a voice that set the others on edge. It was as if there was another layer to her voice, a guttural, bestial tone mirroring her words. “You belong to me. You will follow my orders.”

They watched as the mouses’ eyes dilated, and it relaxed in their grips. They let it fall back onto the ground gently. It lay there for a few seconds before shaking itself off, standing back up, and looking at Violet questioningly.

Grant lowered his shield, shaking his head in relief. “I don’t know if I can get used to that. Especially after the first few kept trying to claw our eyes out.”

Violet looked at him guiltily. “I’m sorry. I still wasn’t sure how to use it this way.”

He waved her off. “Oh, don’t worry about that. They’re just little guys, they’re hardly a threat.”

From the side, Mai spoke up. “I, for one, can definitely get used to this.”

Violet looked at her, and grinned. The older woman was sitting in amongst all of the mice they’d trapped like this, holding one on her lap and petting the thing like a cat. It preened as she did so, leaning into the gentle scritches.

“Honestly, this is a much nicer Skill than my [Arsonist]. I’d trade in a heartbeat. How did you get it?” Mai asked, as the new recruit joined the small swarm.

Violet’s expression darkened. “It was during Integration. I… don’t want to talk about it,”

“Oh! That’s fine, you don’t have to.”

The others exchanged a few glances in a beat of awkward silence. Kevin looked at Mai, tilting his head inquisitively. “How did you get [Arsonist] as your first Skill anyway? You always give off ‘peaceful neighborhood aunty’ vibes.”

She grinned sheepishly. “I lived on the third floor of my apartment, and there was a big… thing in the street outside. I don’t know if it was a monster or just a regular mutated beast, but it was sitting outside, trying to pry someone out of a car. So, I dumped all the flammables I could find on it, tossed down a match, and… Phwoo,” she said, tossing her hands up. “It all caught on fire.”

She shook her finger at him, anticipating his reaction from the awed expression on his face. “It didn’t really do anything though, just made the thing mad. I guess it did give the person in the car time to get out and start running, but the fire didn’t last.”

“Speaking of Skills,” Ramy said, gesturing at the small mouse swarm, “how many more of these guys do you think you can control, Violet?”

She glanced over the mice, their whiskers twitching attentively as her gaze touched them. “Mmm, probably this is it. Bonding them takes up some of my resources. It looks like it locks up some of my health and stamina to maintain. I’d be concerned about taking on any more.”

He nodded, and went to pick up their meaty lure. “Okay. It sounds like we should be thinking about the next step then, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Mai stood, setting the mouse she’d been holding back on the ground with a squeak. “Scouting!”

“...Also known as sitting, for those of us without keen observational Skills, or a legion of beasts at our beck and call.” Mai said, sitting at the window of the second story office they were in.

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The alley they had been trapping mice in had been slightly distant from the train station; there were simply too many of the creatures around the station to have grabbed any quietly. Now, they had stealthily relocated to a building across the street from the station.

Frank, Grant, Mai and their two Vanguard escorts were sitting listlessly by the window. Violet was nearby, having commandeered a table to begin constructing a map for their assault.

“Oh! There’s one coming back now!” Frank pointed excitedly out the window at a mouse, dashing along with something in its mouth. They had been keeping an eye out for Violet’s bonded mice as they went about the tasks she gave them.

Those tasks were, unfortunately, quite simple. The mouse they’d sighted quickly made its way into the building, bounding up the stairs to the little war room they had set up. With a little squeak of victory, it dropped the offering it had brought at Violet’s feet. It was a plant, but not one any of them could place. Twisted by Aether, the green stem glittered like a jewel, transparent and sparkling. At the top, there was a dense bulb, a flower with its petals directed to the center, layered over each other. They glistened, and the deep purple of the petals seemed to shift like smoke across their surface.

Violet picked it up, frowning. She tossed it on a growing pile of plants with odd, almost mystical appearances. Few of them looked even remotely similar to each other.

She turned back to the rough sketch that Kevin had done of what the interior floor plan should be, and circled one side of the basement. Flipping back to the main floor, she looked over marks she’d made, and sighed. “This feels like playing Battleship.”

Grant glanced over. “What’s that?”

“Well, it just feels like I’m playing one-sided Battleship.” She said, exasperation clear in her voice. “I can send the mice into rooms to bring back something from there and guess if it’s part of the nest or not, but I have no way of knowing for sure with most of these rooms.”

He wandered over, looking at the map thoughtfully. “But there’s a few places you feel confident about, right? Here and here.” He pointed to two locations, one in the basement and one on the main floor.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure their stockpile is in the basement, and the main part of the nest is in the offices, but I don’t know which other rooms we should be aware of.” She gestured to a decently sized pile of fur sitting on the floor beside the table. “Sometimes they bring stuff back from those rooms, and sometimes they don’t. Kevin couldn’t get a good look at them either, so I have no confirmation!” She looked over her maps, chewing a fingernail.

Gently, Grant put a hand on her shoulder. “‘You can’t let perfect be the enemy of good’. Have you heard that before? This,” he said, pointing at the maps. “May not be perfect. But it is far more information than we had before. It’s not just good; I’d say it’s great. It’s something we can take action with, and that’s all we need.”

She sighed, still anxiously toying with her hands. “Yeah, that’s true. I don’t think I’m getting any useful information at this point, so as soon as Kevin and Ramy get back with a way in for us… We’re set.”

He clapped her on the back. “And we shouldn’t need to risk ourselves too much thanks to your Skill.”

She nodded. “If the plan works.”

“If the plan works,” he conceded.

Shortly after that, Kevin and Ramy returned from their own scouting mission. Kevin walked up the maps they were putting together, and added a few marks around the perimeter of the station.

“So, we went around the whole block and got a good look at all the entrances and exits. There are doors on most sides of the station, as well as windows directly into the building in these locations,” he said, marking them on the map. “We can also get in from the platform, but that’s a very visible move.” He tapped one of the office rooms in the station, marked with a question mark. “I think getting in through this empty room–”

“Possibly empty room,” Violet interjected.

“Getting in through this probably empty room looks like the best bet, once we kick things in motion.” He finished, looking around the room. “Assuming everything is ready, of course.”

Mai lifted a molotov. “I’m all set.”

Violet nodded as the rest of her mice filed back into the room. There were eight of them in total. “I mean, I don’t have to do much, but I just need to tell them to go.”

Frank looked up from the floor, where he was ever-so delicately attempting to write on some of the plants the swarm had brought back from the stockpile on their scouting missions. “...Gimme just a minute?”

“Don’t eat this,” Violet said, handing the last of the enchanted plants to a mouse. It looked at the glittering, stunningly beautiful and absolutely delicious looking plant with wide eyes. Then it turned to her, an unspoken question and plea on its face.

Mai covered her eyes. “I don’t know if I can do this. What if they don’t make it out in time?”

One of the examiners spoke up for the first time in a while. “They’re beasts. If it helps, they’d be happy to tear into you without that bonding Skill on them.”

The other nodded. “You’ll also get more Aether if they don’t make it out!”

As the one sending the mice on their orders, Violet turned to the group awkwardly. “Well, they’ve got their ‘alluring’ food, so… They’re all ready to go.”

Grant glanced at Mai. “Are you ready?”

She sighed, nodding. “Yeah, I am. Let’s do it.”

Violet turned back to her mice. “Do you remember what I told you to do earlier? Go gather everybody up back home to share this food! …And then try to get out, I guess.”

With that, her eight mice ran off into the streets, quickly dispersing in all directions around the station. They sat patiently, waiting for a few minutes as the plan got rolling. Suddenly, they heard a growing cacophony, the squeaks of mice coming from many directions. Then, streams of the little beasts began flooding back into the station, led by the nine bonded ones.

As the streams thinned to a trickle, the party made their move, dashing across the street to a side entrance at the station, the one Kevin had indicated. Opening the door, they found themselves in a wrecked, but empty, office.

Following the maps they had put together, they quickly made their way toward where the nest was believed to be, in what had been a room full of public lockers. As they stood outside the entrance, they had to step over all kinds of torn fabrics and scavenged fiber that had been scattered across the station.

The noise leaking out from within the locker room was nearly deafening. The excited squeals and squeaks of dozens, if not hundreds of large mice as they marvelled over the greatest things they had ever seen was all they could hear.

Mai grimaced as she pulled out her second-to-last molotov. With how much fabric and fiber was spilling out of the room, her greatest consolation was that they would go quick.

In a quick motion, she lit the incendiary and tossed it into the room.

The others stood stoically outside the room as flames caught, catching any beasts as they attempted to escape from the screams of their kin. A few of the mice Violet had bonded had made their way back out of the room before the conflagration had begun, against the temptation of the lures they had been tasked with carrying in. A few had stayed.

Violet flinched, clutching her head and falling to her knees.

Ramy glanced back from the entrance to the burning nest. “Violet! Are you okay?”

She grimaced, getting back to her feet. “Yeah! -ish. All the beast bonds I had just broke. Apparently that comes with some feedback from the bond.”

He turned back as an enraged mouse threw itself at him, and deftly countered, stunning it for his allies to finish. “Didn’t some of them get out, though?”

She frowned, turning to look down the hall toward the platform. “Yeah…”

In the distance, she could see some of her previously bound mice run squeaking out toward the platform, before turning toward the entrance to the basement. She took a few steps in their direction, curious to see where they were headed.

At the top of the stairs, she heard their little squeaks, almost frantic.

Then, coming from the basement, she heard a ground-shaking roar.