She was pure and pristine, like a white moth fluttering through the dark and musty laboratory. Cinni, in her dress, strolled through the halls, moving past samples encased in a strange fluid and subjects cased in glass. Aria followed behind, accompanied by Wrath and Sloth.

Cinni was almost childlike, gently moving through her personal laboratory humming a soft tune. It was the same song as the one Sloth was playing on her accordion. She seemed joyful, as if Aria’s arrival signaled something great to come. Of course, she had plenty of questions for her.

Why was the cage seemingly built with capturing kids in mind, a la the tiny bed. Just what was she planning on doing, kidnapping random children who were deemed to have, as Wrath put it, potential.

What did potential mean, and did she even want to find out?

Cinni was transparently clear. The bright, pristine look she wore was all just a cover for whatever sinister thoughts she had in her head. That which is too perfect is what you ought to be most suspicious of.

In this world, there was no such thing as perfection. From the level cap of 99 instead of the clean 100 to the blood soaked method of collecting EXP. Even the Gods above were imperfect. Why else would there be multiple Gods ruling over a single continent?

“Questions, questions,” Cinni hummed. “You have questions for me, don’t you? Go ahead and take a stab at me.”

Cinni asked Aria to carve her. Aria obliged.

“Who are you?”

“Cinni Carver, the Empire’s most brilliant researcher.”

“Researcher of what?”

Cinni paused. Aria didn’t make the mistake of bumping into the person she followed twice.

“Cinni?” Aria asked, and Cinni hunched over, allowing her white hair to spill down her shoulders like curtains on a breezy morning.

Did she upset her? Already? So soon? Was Cinni about to show off her true face, revealing a twisted expression fit for an equally twisted researcher?

“Aria… that’s a sensitive question…”

“I want to know. No — I need to know.”

“If you insist.”

Cinni reached out at one of her samples, then spun around 180 and showed it off to her. Instead of an evil grin, she wore a gentle smile that glowed the room up. In her arms was a little test tube and inside of it floated a tiny slime, one that swam around up and down in the flask.

“I am Cinni Carver, Imperial researcher of happiness.”

“Happiness? What? Are you a psychologist? How does one even research happiness?”

Cinni pressed her fingers together, nervously, allowing her white-painted nails to show.

“Well, you see, happiness is a fleeting thing. It’s something so many desire, yet it’s so easy to obtain. It’s as easy as receiving a ‘good morning’ and a smile from the one you love.”

“Mystery solved,” Aria said. Her snarkiness multiplied in the face of Cinni’s sweetness.

Cinni, however, began to chip away like old paint. Her smile turned cold.

“If only it were that simple.”

Cinni brought her down the halls, which were like a labyrinth filled to the brim with live subjects and tubes pouring liquid mana — food — into their cages.

The childlike glee of her strolling turned to a more brisk and quickly-paced walk, all the way to the brainstorming room of her laboratory — a laboratory built for the specialized mind of a savant. Placed smack dab in the center was a whiteboard with the word ‘happiness’ drawn on the center.

Like a teacher, Cinni pulled out a stick and tapped against the board.

“You see, in the modern day world, our Imperial citizens are at an all time low of happiness,” she said. “My goal is to bring back color and joy into peoples’ lives, and what better sources of joy is there than a young child?”

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Aria looked at her suspiciously. Cinni simply laughed it off.

“Don’t worry, Aria. I won’t be cutting you open and turning your body into a consumable liquid happiness. It’d be far too costly and a most inefficient method of raising happiness levels.”

Aria only grew more concerned at the statement. If she could turn children into liquid happiness like a witch at her cauldron, there was no telling what she’d done to discover that fact.

“If you were wondering, no. I did not turn children into liquid happiness,” Cinni said, and she burst into laughter, shouting, “Oh! The people these days! They love to spread rumors. I’ll have you know, I’m not even half as interesting as the rumors state. Sorry to disappoint.”

“Apology… accepted.”

Aria took the moment to turn and look at the two SDS soldiers who simply turned away, as if they didn’t want to draw attention to Cinni’s terrible jokes — if they were even jokes, that is. It was plain uncomfortable to be around Cinni, despite the fact she was angelically beautiful. It wasn’t that her personality was bad, either. It was just that she was just too damn suspicious.

For whatever reason, Aria trusted a demoness more than a ‘researcher of happiness’, whatever the Hell that meant.

Although, there was one question Aria had in mind.

“Miss Carver?” she asked. “What is your relationship to Gray Arkal?”

“Gray!? Oh! I almost forgot! You were under his employment — and here I thought my work conditions were inhumane, good lord.”

“Cinni?”

“Gray is my fiance,” she answered, covering the blush that turned her pale face a touch red. “You must be wondering just how someone like me could get such a catch. Why, the best method of getting yourself a man is through the stomach. Keep that in mind when you grow up.”

“I’m just wondering how that old man became your fiance. He seemed too grumpy to ever get married.”

“The spiniest urchins have the best roe, and Gray is quite spiny, if I do say so myself.”

She made a lot of references to food and eating. On the surface, it’d seem normal for a woman who claimed to be quite the cook, but under these circumstances it only made her more unsettling.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Aria didn’t realize it until it was too late, that she was wearing a transparent expression that spilled out every one of her thoughts.

“Are you afraid?” Cinni asked, sticking her tongue out coyly. “Why, there’s nothing to be afraid of here. After all, I’m simply a researcher of human happiness.”

“And how close are you to finding a solution?”

“Very, very close.”

She would have preferred Cinni be farther from her solution, for Aria had no idea what sort of devastating cost the solution would be priced at. Cinni seemed confident in herself, a little too confident. She could see that glint in her eyes, a warning of disaster to come.

“But! There’s no time for dawdling!” Cinni said, and she set the stick aside before reaching out a hand to Aria, asking, “Won’t you come with me? I shall unlock the secrets of this world and the secret to eternal bliss for you.”

The secrets of the world? Wrath made himself clear. It was up to her if she wanted to discover secrets that could tear apart the fabric of their world. Aria’s hand fell by her side, towards the hidden revolver he gave her.

“Oh, and don’t think about shooting me with that gun.”

Aria froze, leapt back and pulled out her revolver. The moment she pulled the trigger, she heard a click and nothing more. She pulled it once more to find that it wasn’t firing.

“Why isn’t my gun working?”

“Because, this is a gun free zone. The rules of this world forbid the usage of firearms here in my laboratory.”

Cinni smiled, then pulled out a sheet of paper. Marked on the front were the words, ‘Gun Free Zone’ and stamped on the bottom was a familiar stamp, the axe of Seti, the God of Fairness.

“Now, why don’t we be good friends and get along?” Cinni asked, and to Aria’s shock, she turned and began walking down the hall with no regard for attacks from behind.

Aria watched as she made her way down the hall, only to find herself pushed along by Wrath who stood behind her. Sloth was nowhere to be seen, leaving Wrath as the only guard in this strange laboratory.

The elevator came clamoring down. Boris shuddered in his boots, all while Gray stood still, unfazed by the bumpy trip. It was hard for Boris to believe that they really have gone ahead and infiltrated the Empire. He could hear the commotion above through the shaft of the elevator. The soldiers were completely distracted by the explosions in the shipyard, leaving them none the wiser to their infiltrator’s real motives.

“Get prepping for combat,” Gray said, and Boris turned to see Gray with quite an arsenal of weapons.

Gray summoned a set of weapons from the blue. Appearing out of nowhere and fissling into reality was an eastern crescent spear, a throwable tomahawk and to Boris’ surprise, an AK-47 assault rifle.

It was a bizarre gun. It looked nothing like the rifles manufactured by the Empire. Boris watched as Gray unloaded the magazine, checking the contents and popping out a few rounds to inspect them up and down. It looked like the magazine was loaded with lead bullets instead of the standard fire crystal cartridges.

He took the gun and aimed it up and through the ventilation of the elevator chamber. With one tug of the trigger, he found that the gun didn’t fire.

“So, he managed to curry favor with the Gods,” he whispered to himself. “Looks like he’s set up a gun free zone here.”

“A gun free zone?”

“Don’t ask too many questions. You won’t get satisfying answers.”

The elevator came to a halt, and with it, the two stepped out into the laboratory.