Infinity Inc/Chimes
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Opal scowled for the briefest moment before she caught herself. Hybrid Deltas should be serene and confident in most circumstances, as far as she was concerned; but more to the point, her face was art and she didn't want to start developing frown lines again.
Still, she decided as she watched the smaller Hybrid Alpha explore the side room, it was worth a bit of scowling.
Ahead, Iceberia paced impatiently between industrial storage shelves as the office building finally joined itself to a proper warehouse. Ever since the mission where they'd found the deep freeze chamber, her tiger alternated between racing to clear a warehouse of all possible hidden targets and annoyance over the possibility of atypical combat areas. He growled under his breath every time he crossed the open space.
Iceberia was wonderful in combat, but not yet very much for scouting and reporting, which was why Opal confiscated a second Hybrid Alpha for this mission. Officially. Unofficially, she saw a peer's assigned Alpha sitting around in one of the communal Alpha cages with no particular task impending, and knew the Delta in question would be busy for several hours yet; if Opal could not get the Killing Dance to open up to her, perhaps she could learn about him by spending some time with his frequent companion.
And now the Alpha was making a painstakingly thorough search of a sunken box of a room, which would be fine and proper, except that Opal suspected the little furball was no longer searching for hidden data drives so much as studying the design of the room itself, and the placement of many dozen handmade bells or wind chimes or something so that every brush of the equipment would result in tinkling music.
For one telling piece of evidence: the way the leopard moved had changed. She no longer crept or stalked. Her body language had shed most of its inherent mistrustful enmity. Something almost like grace filled the gap, as the scrawny Alpha twisted through narrow gaps between one weight lifting bench and another sparring target, delighted when she managed without setting one of the dangling cascades to swaying, equally as delighted when she had to reach back with claws or tail to delicately halt the chimes again.
She is dancing, Opal concluded sourly. Like him. Again she schooled herself to not frown.
At last, a little breathless, the leopard extracted herself from the exercise chamber and scurried up the steps. A shadow of the mimicked grace remained in her last few steps as the Alpha sank to a humble crouch at Opal's feet.
"Please, Verse," the Alpha began in that guttural voice, "save that room. No break. You make gift to Dance."
What?
That was so utterly not what Opal expected to hear, she leaned over to grasp the leopard's ear between two sharp fingers and tilt her head upward. "What? Fehral, explain yourself."
"Please," she repeated -- if anything, more humbly, more obviously intending to beg. "Client no order destroy all place. Only hunt target, hunt machine pieces with blink lights and picture of two axe. Verse can do as she wish to all rest. Or not do. Please. You save that room. You bring the Killing Dance to room, make gift. Cost you nothing. You just say you find, you see is for dancing, you not have use, you think maybe he enjoy."
Opal studied the leopard's upturned face for several minutes. She looked over at the room, regarding it silently. Finally she returned her attention to her borrowed minion. "Fehral. If I do this, do you say the Killing Dance will finally show me courtesy?"
A troubled expression ghosted across Fehral's brown eyes. "No get."
Opal pinched that ear tighter, impatiently. "If I give him this place, will he be nice to me? Will he want to talk with me?"
Fehral winced as blood started to trickle down the long curve of her ears, but forced herself to not pull away. "Fehral not know. Dance no much talk."
"He talks with Grigaere," Opal grumbled.
"That is ... talk art," the leopard tried to explain. "Music. Dancing. Joy. You get? Is same and not same. Is not like, like paint. No talk Ceylon. No talk Kinba Kushi. You not make music. You Brigid's Verse," she stumbled over the name. "You art no help him dance."
"My art is poetry," Opal snapped as she tossed the leopard to one side. She stalked forward a few steps to gaze again at the exercise room and all of its precisely-arranged clumps of carved things.
Though she did not look to either side, she was aware of Iceberia lurking to her left, in the shadows of the laden shelves, hoping for any command to attack. To her right, huddled against the wall, Fehral picked herself barely upright again and scrubbed the drying blood away with the back of one paw. The leopard kept herself otherwise still, not quite abased, but certainly as meek as Opal could recall having ever seen.
She must really want this, Opal estimated grimly. Well, then. What will she pay?
"You say it will cost me nothing," she told the leopard at last, turning to put her back to the exercise room, "but that is not true. It will cost me time, and effort, and may not get me anything at all in return. Our personal time is precious to us, little Alpha. I want something from you, if I am to do this. Something that even your Killing Dance has not had."
Fehral stared at her warily, bewildered. "Fehral has nothing," she pointed out softly. "Fehral is Alpha. No allow equipment. Verse want Fehral blanket?"
"No. Giving me your blanket is not at all the same as what you ask of me."
The leopard glanced across the intersection at the tiger for a moment. "Fehral has nothing."
"Fehral has," Opal corrected purringly, "her flaws."
Now both of the Alphas were staring at her. Opal reveled in their concentrated focus for a moment. "Everyone at the Isles facility hears talk of the Alpha named Fehral, sooner or later, if only because the employees complain so bitterly of your mood swings. You are obedient at some moments, sullen and contrary at others, belligerent or frantic without any cause they can deduce. You are one of the oldest products of the Hybrid Alpha project line, and they say that your design has flaws they may never eradicate. You are only assigned to the Killing Dance because it was that or terminate your project." Opal leaned forward a bit, lowering her voice, as if imparting a juicy secret instead of common knowledge. "And I hear that your designers are already dead, their facility dismantled: you are the only part of your project that remains to be destroyed."
All three were silent for so long that Fehral finally realized a response was expected. "Yes," she whispered, shuddering. "Dance is to tame Fehral. Or end project. Cannot fix."
"Ahh," Opal crowed, "so you do understand the nature of your doom. I wondered. You still manage to earn yourself quite a bit of punishment."
Fehral thought about that for several seconds. "Observer say is better than before," she admitted reluctantly. "Say maybe Killing Dance only need more time. Say Fehral always be some bad." Her ears twitched the problem away. "Is what Verse want? Hear Fehral is broken?"
"Oh, leopard Alpha, that isn't even the beginning of what I want." Opal pointed back at the exercise room behind her, posing dramatically. "You want me to give this to your Delta, who holds your death in his hands. Fine. I can certainly understand the value in that. If he fails to retrain you, the lack will be seen in you, not in him. So this is really for your benefit, I think. I want you, for the rest of this day, to be my Alpha. To be what an Alpha is meant to be."
Again, barely breathing this time, Fehral stared at Opal in bewilderment. "No get."
Opal was not about to let a little refusal to comprehend get in her way. "You do not always do as even the Killing Dance bids you," she pointed out. "You have your flaws. You withhold your assistance in combat. You refuse when he orders you to the training wing, until he has to physically crowd or drag you." Automatically, she gave the command word its perfect pitch and inflection: "You wander away from your assigned post when told here. I will grant, you scout and report and kill well enough ... most of the time. Today, this mission and all the way back to the base and even then until I release you, Fehral, you will suffer whatever lash you must direct in your own mind in order to perfectly comply with any command I give."
Fehral clung to the wall with both hands, claws extended, as if hiding against a mother's skirts. She trembled for several minutes, wide-eyed.
"This is something you do not give the Killing Dance," Opal explained softly. "Your willful, utter cooperation. It will cost you dearly. It will exhaust you. It will weaken you, as you fight yourself nearly to destruction. I do not care about that. What I want, what I want, is to force your absolute limits. And you will do it to yourself. Because I think you can be a good Alpha, obedient and meek and terribly dangerous, if only you have reason enough to overcome the flaws in your design."
At last, the shaking leopard stuttered back into words. "Vvv'rrs no get! Fehral no can. Try! Many year try! Delta before Dance try. Beat me every time fail. Try so much. Not Fehral fault! Mind howl and body move and Fehral bad! Please, Verse, no want this. No can give."
"You do not," Opal gently said, "tell me 'no'. I am Brigid's Verse. I am a Delta!"
Pressing tighter against the wall, Fehral looked away for several breaths. Finally she got her quaking under some control. "Okay, look. No can give all that. Give some. Still hurt. Want Fehral help in fight, is stupid. Fehral tiny. Get in tiger's way. Just piss off tiger. You no care Fehral go training because is at base. You no remember Omegas and you never get why Fehral hate. Dance no get either and he no care. You want make Fehral be servant. Some things Fehral no can, that part of mind is broken. Some things Fehral can do but very hard, and maybe break in middle. Dance not yet ask any of that, ever. Verse want that?"
Opal thought about it, startled. She hadn't expected the Alpha to come back with a counter-offer. "I might. We expect resistance to some commands, from even the most docile Alpha. Have you been placed in restraints before?"
Even Iceberia growled at the hint of the chains command. Fehral shot him an annoyed glance. "Hybrid Omega do. Delta before Killing Dance try. Stupid."
"No, I did not think so." Opal fell silent, thinking about the verbal command list.
Slowly, unwillingly, the leopard offered, "Dance never yet say obey."
Opal jerked upright, astounded. "Never? Why, that's the most obvious start to the puzzle of you!"
Fehral's ears and whiskers twitched in negation. "Never. Owner tell Fehral 'obey the Killing Dance'. Say 'always'. Walk away. Fehral not even know if Dance know how say."
Opal laughed happily. "Of course he knows how to say it, any Delta who is taught to give commands at all knows how to say it, there must be something in your record about that command and the flaws in your programming and he thinks that is the mistake everyone else has made with you all this time."
A shrug travelled from Fehral's hunched shoulders down the curve of her spine until it shivered at the end of her tail. "Dunno."
"Marvelous. That's fine. What other command has he skipped?"
Fehral looked around at the floor, uncomfortable. "Umm. No submit. No need. Dance fight more'n Fehral. He say eat sometimes. He always have protein shake but is not for Alpha. No use return." She searched her memory for a moment. "No follow. No reason. Never tell Fehral hide or Ssssss--" The Alpha broke off, but the command she meant was obviously and understandably the terrifying first routine taught all Hybrids of any series, to freeze in place and make no sound.
"Well," Opal decided; "useless and pointless and not relevant to today, mostly. Very well. You will go scout the next area, find a valid target and come bring my Iceberia to it. You will stay out of all combat unless Iceberia invites you. Hide and assist Iceberia. Understand?"
"Yes, Verse."
"Go on, then."
Opal turned back to gaze upon the exercise room, and calculate how long into the afternoon she should wait before she proved that the obey command worked perfectly as designed if the Alpha was surprised with it. "Good tiger," she murmured under her breath, "you'll do very nicely."
