Chapter Text
The same thing has been happening in the conference room, yet again.
The din of rising voices escalated gradually at every exchanged line, the argument easily becoming the focus of this week’s meeting. Eventually all the preparations for the meeting: the data projected against the wall, printouts of confidential data, softcopies meant to be pushed to each attendee’s devices—all became worthless.
Even under the dimmed lights of the conference room Marius could easily pick out the shrugging of Rosa’s shoulders; Luke had also quit bothering to be surreptitious with playing his mobile game, even laying his phone flat on the table, its screen showing miniature soldiers fighting for dominance in yet another tower defense game.
“I am telling you right now, Richter, the course of action you are proposing is unwise. Someone has to stay and process the data here in the Headquarters, and the best candidate to do that will be the owner of the sys—”
An elegant, yet seething voice cut in. “If you were listening for the past hour, Wing, I did say that the manual input required for this case is very minimal, and that it can easily be done remotely.”
“You are just looking for excuses to run off with my junior, and as her boss I do not—”
Marius’s ears started to tune out the bickering between the two oldest NXX members, who unfortunately also acted most childishly whenever the point of contention involved a certain someone.
He sighed as he shifted in his seat, uncrossing and crossing his legs. The meeting has been running for more than an hour now, and yet very little has been achieved.
God. Let this end already.
The pile of printed documents—all bearing important, confidential information handed to them under the table by Captain Darius Morgan—remained untouched; a good indicator as to how much time had been wasted within the confines of the NXX conference room.
Oddly enough Marius remained reticent all throughout; he kept to himself ever since they started to convene for their regular meeting.
Usually he would’ve joined the fray, or oftentimes even start the bickering; but all Marius had been doing for the past hour and a half was stare at Rosa, who sat across from him at the conference table.
One of his hands propped up his chin as he made googoo eyes at her—which the junior lawyer deliberately ignored, her eyes stubbornly glued to the holographic display projected onto the glass wall—while his other hand fiddled with cloth charm that he received a couple of days ago under very, very strange circumstances.
“I just need to hold on to this while making my wish, huh.” Marius’s quiet voice was easily drowned out by the argument now made worse with Luke joining in. His eyes were still glued to his favorite Missy Lawyer, wishing and hoping she’d spare him a glance; maybe even throw him just a crumb of acknowledgement.
Yet Rosa was still hellbent on ignoring Marius, still upset at the relentless teasing he did while they were waiting for Vyn to arrive at the Headquarters’ lounge before the meeting started.
Everything had come to a head when he, still riding that exhilarating high he usually experienced whenever he was around her, saw it fit to steal her packed lunch of chicken nuggets and fries.
Then proceeding to eat each and every piece in front of her.
Marius had meant to buy her a new lunch out of the goodness of his heart—that way she’d have something fresh and hot when lunchtime came—yet he just had to run his mouth and made his already vile deed worse several magnitudes over by proclaiming she deserved something better, maybe cooked by one of the chefs under his family’s employ, believing that the chicken nuggets were merely bought from some fast food joint nearby.
As it turned out, Rosa herself cooked the nuggets, and was particularly proud of how she managed to pull off a certain fast food joint’s secret recipe.
Needless to say, he accidentally wounded her pride in the worst way possible.
How do I make her look at me again? His fingers flipped the small silk charm in his hand over and over, as he looked at her with such pining. Can’t stand the thought of letting the day end without her forgiving me for being such a dumbass.
He sighed once again.
It seemed that all he could do at this point was to merely sigh.
No longer seeing the point of the meeting, Marius took out the silken charm from underneath the table, placing it on the glass surface so he could appreciate its details: A cartoonish depiction of a rotund calico cat was embroidered onto the pink silk; Marius found it extremely endearing, for something that had been promised to him as a precious artifact powerful enough to grant wishes.
I wonder…
Two days ago.
“Mr. Von Hagen! Mr. Von Hagen!”
Normally, Marius would ignore any unfamiliar voice who called for him, striding faster in an effort to get away from yet another enterprising distant whoever who saw it fit to take their chances with the ‘young, impressionable Von Hagen’.
Yet this time, Marius immediately stopped and turned around to face the man, for one simple reason: They were both in the corridor leading to his own bedroom.
Which meant that the total stranger managed to get past their usually formidable security and infiltrate his family’s private residence.
Marius was ready to deck the man who dared —and probably whoever was in today’s security detail—but he stopped dead in his tracks the moment he laid his eyes on the little man who trailed him.
To say that the little man was strangely attired was a severe understatement: a voluminous red silken belted robe over loose black trousers; the entire outfit topped off with a black silk ceremonial cap sporting a long tail that trailed along the short man’s back.
The entire costume wasn’t too outrageous by Marius’s standards—he vaguely recognized it from the depictions of Japanese shrine priests he’d seen on television—but the fact that there was a Japanese shrine priest lurking in his home had him pinching the side of his arm to check if he was dreaming or snoozing in the middle of a particularly boring board meeting.
“No, no. This is no dream, I can assure you, Mr. Von Hagen,” the strange looking man simpered. “I am only here to make a delivery. Yes.”
Having had his share of dubious gifts sent his way, Marius had to raise his hand in objection. “Whoa. Hold on there.” He gave the other man a once-over. He wasn’t carrying anything that could be taken as a particularly expensive gift; both of the man’s hands were empty. Maybe there’s a small jewelry box hidden somewhere in those huge sleeves? He threw a cursory glance at the man’s clothing, including the voluminous trousers made of flowy fabric. Maybe something jade?
The Shinto priest’s eyes further narrowed into slits; his mouth curved in a sly grin. “If you are looking for anything suspicious, you will find nothing. No.” His hand finally slipped into one of his trousers’ side pockets, producing a flat embroidered flat silken pouch sealed on one end with an elaborate knot. “This. Take it.”
Tiny hands grabbed Marius’s closed fist, planting the silk charm onto his palm and closing his fingers over it. “The girl wished for you the best. She is a kind, pure soul.” The priest’s grin widened further. “You are lucky, yes. She got the best luck; she chose to give it away. To you.”
This is getting ridiculous. Marius slipped his own hand into his pocket, pressing the hidden side button of his smartphone designed only to be used whenever his life in his danger; and this was a good moment for him to believe he was indeed in danger: someone snuck into a place where he is most vulnerable, whose behavior was too unpredictable that Marius may probably not be able to talk his way out of it should things go horribly south.
“To use this charm, just hold it in your right hand and make a wish. That’s it. Easy peasy .”
“Hang on. Who sent this? Who’s ‘she’?”
“Eheheh. That, Mr. Von Hagen, is a trade secret.” Marius could almost make out a flashing of teeth as the man grinned. “An exchange of favors, then? Yes?”
Marius gulped. He had listened to many proposals enough for him to know that agreeing to anything with this sort of person, even verbally, was dangerous.
“I’m just asking who she is. Not interested in making a blind deal, old man.”
The device was supposed to send the closest security to his location within a matter of a single minute or less; yet Marius found himself still talking—and trying to suss out more details on the gift and the identity of the sender—for way longer than a few minutes and yet no one has arrived yet.
Shit. Did he…?
No. Impossible.
“...like I said, Mr. Von Hagen, if there is no exchange, then I am honor-bound not to let you know who she is, no.”
“Alright. Okay, how about this, then. How the hell did you manage to get here?”
“I have my ways, yes.”
Marius had a few choice words for that kind of sassy reply—some people actually did pull that on him—yet he was briefly distracted by a small flash of light off the other end of the corridor behind the suspicious man, his eyes only leaving him for a few seconds. “Wait—what hap—”
Then, a flick of a bushy tail in the shadows.
“—pened…”
When he set his sights back to where the priest stood, there was no other soul in the otherwise empty corridor but his.
A few seconds later frantic footsteps thumped across the carpet; security had finally arrived, and each and every one of them swore that only less than a minute passed between them receiving his distress signal and their arrival at the scene.
A later review of CCTV footage revealed that Marius was standing by himself in the corridor for a few moments; no one was with him, strange-looking little man or otherwise.
Marius had then chalked the hallucination up to work fatigue.
But the silk charm was still in his fist.
Loud scuffling sounds pulled Marius away from his reverie. Artem and Vyn would have already traded blows, if it weren’t for Luke restraining Artem by holding onto his arms and Rosa doing the same to Vyn, trying her hardest not to let go.
Look at her. Wish she’d hold on to me like that, Marius idly mused as he ran his thumb across the charm’s smooth fabric, conveniently ignoring the context behind why Rosa was clinging to the doctor’s arms. I wish she’d hold me, tell me I’m a good boy …
…
…
…
“Meow.”
“What the actual fuck.”
Luke ran towards Marius’s chair. “Marius. God fucking damnit I can’t deal with your stupid jokes right now.” His voice came out strangled in utter frustration as he stared at the slate gray-colored cat sitting on a pile of Marius’s discarded clothing, heaped haphazardly all over the latter’s seat. “This is the worst time to be pulling jokes, Marius. Come out now, or I’ll make sure the Von Hagens won’t have their next generation.”
Vyn let out an inelegant snort. “I suppose our squabbling bored him. If you only listened to reason, Wing, instead of forcing onto me your insecurities—”
“All of us can see through you, Richter—”
Luke had had enough. “Hey, Watson. Remember how we fixed this kind of problem back in middle school?”
“Wait what do you mean—oh.” Rosa's lips slowly cracked into a smile as comprehension dawned on her. “Yeah. How we always solved quarrels in the playground back then?” She winked. “Let’s do it, for old time’s sake.”
“That’s my Watson. On the count of three, then… One.” Luke cracked his gloved knuckles. “Two.”
Artem and Vyn, both too preoccupied with each other, failed to notice the other two sneaking into position behind them: Luke once again behind Artem, and Rosa slinking into Vyn’s shadow.
“Three..”
Luke and Rosa both grabbed and pulled the back of the other two’s collars, then—not giving Artem nor Vyn any chance to react—collided Artem’s and Vyn’s heads against each other’s with such force, that the impact produced a thud sound loud enough to make Rosa wince.
Vyn let out a scathing string of unheard-of curses; Artem held his throbbing, stinging forehead quietly as he doubled over in pain.
“Right. Have you guys had enough already?” Luke crossed his arms, glaring at his older colleagues carefully rubbing at the red, swollen lumps forming on their foreheads. “I would have just stuffed both of you in a Get Along shirt, but I never expected I’d see use of it in a room full of adults, so I don’t have one in my pocket.” He jerked his thumb towards the cat now rolling on the glass conference table. “Can we now move on to whatever shit Marius just pulled?”
Vyn let out a long, pained sigh. He was about to retort, but bit back his words as soon as he realized that it was Rosa who pushed his head towards Artem’s. “Fine,” he snapped. “Let us review the security footage in the server room.”
Yet looping the footage that captured the exact moment when Marius was replaced with a cat yielded absolutely nothing. “It’s not even edited,” Luke murmured as he ran that particular clip in his own laptop over and over, at the same time checking for any telltale irregularities in the footage’s metadata in a separate window. “The video is clean.”
Artem walked over to Luke and peered at the detective’s screen. “If it’s clean, then what does that mean about whatever Marius did?”
Luke merely shrugged. “I’m at a loss. Either Marius really did disappear, or…” He craned his neck to look outside the server room door, right at the spot where Marius’s seat was located. “Is there a trap door…? Vyn?”
However, Vyn wasn’t paying attention to their review of the footage—which he himself proposed—and was instead in the middle of a hushed conversation with Rosa, while Luke and Artem were busy trying to make heads or tails of Marius’s disappearance. “He looks like a Russian Blue,” Luke heard Vyn whisper as the doctor peered at the wide-eyed slender cat currently ensconced in her arms, purring loudly as it licked its paw. “Color-wise, he is a Marius -like cat indeed.”
She giggled. “He acts very Marius too.”
“With how he bit my finger? Yes.” Vyn concurred, as if he wasn’t talking to someone who played a big part in inflicting the unsightly bump on his forehead. “Mayhap this is really Marius. If so, I very much prefer him to stay in this form.”
“Hey, Vyn, can you please stop flirting with Rosa for a second and work with me?” Luke groused, almost about to lose it himself. If Vyn pushed even a bit further, his trained fist may even find its way to the doctor’s irritatingly pretty face. “Please?”
Vyn tsk-ed. “I was merely staying out of your way,” he muttered as he approached Luke. “Well?”
Luke tapped onto the CCTV screen that displayed the portion of the floor underneath Marius’s chair. “I was going to ask if this basement allows for things like trapdoors.”
Silver hair oscillated as Vyn shook his head. “Impossible. As you said, this is the basement. There are no other floors underneath, only this building’s foundation and the bedrock it is anchored to.”
Luke buried his face in his hands. Well then.
“I…I don’t have anything else to say. That cat,” he pointed to the one now purring loudly in Rosa’s arms, “Is Marius. Unless I am mistaken. Whatever.” He threw up his hands, pulling away from the CCTV panel after he tucked his laptop underneath his arm, slinking out of the server room. “I give up. Just call me when I’m needed.”
The detective silently gathered his things and noped out of NXX Headquarters.
“Um. Mr. Wing? Dr. Richter?” Rosa piped up as she watched the two men gather their own things after Luke. “What do I do with Marius here?”
Artem looked at the cat warily. “My apartment building does not allow for pets, unfortunately.”
“I cannot take care of a pet,” Vyn said a little too quickly. “I have too much on my plate right now. But for you, Rosa, I can explore other options that we could take. Like surrendering the cat to a shelter—”
“NO!” Rosa tightened her hold on the gray cat, its small vibrating body now pressed firmly against her chest. “We will not hand Marius over to a shelter. You hear me? No!”
“Rosa, listen to reason, please.” Artem started to loosely fold the Pax acting CEO’s garments, slipping them inside a foldaway shopping bag he always kept in his briefcase in case of any sudden grocery runs. “A shelter will attend to a cat’s needs better than a busy attorney who lives alone.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits. “Ohh, so if it’s against Marius, both of you know how to agree with each other.” She shifted her hold on the cat, letting it nuzzle and lick her chin. “I’ll be taking care of him then.”
Rosa gently slipped her hands underneath the cat’s front legs and held it out in front of her. “Aren’t you such a cutie pie?” she cooed in a singsong voice. “I’ll take you home tonight!”
The cat squirmed a little in her grasp. “Nyaa.”
Hearing those words—and finally understanding just how intent his rose was in looking after the cat’s welfare—Vyn said, “Let me drive you to the nearest pet—”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this Dr. Richter!” Rosa cut in with a forced cheer as she gathered her things with one arm; her other arm already full of purring cat. “Do your stuff!”
Artem also could not help but take his chances to see if he could outdo Vyn this time. “I can help you with that, Ro—”
“Nuh-uh!” Rosa interrupted her boss with as much forced enthusiasm as she did with the doctor, already well on her way towards the door. “I know you’re also swamped with work, Mr. Wing. Don’t worry about me, this is all taken care of.” She winked as she pushed open the heavy glass door with her hips.
Then, under her breath: “Assholes.”
An hour’s worth of pet supplies shopping later.
Rosa finally made it to her apartment, flopping onto her sofa as soon as she reached her living room. The cat—which she already called Marius, even if the veracity of the cat being him was still debatable—then proceeded to jump onto the carpet. It rubbed its warm, purring body against her calves that ached after all the walking she did, while carrying a cat and several shopping bags, at the same time.
“Meow.”
She reached down to give it a few chin scritches. “You’re cute, Marius.” The cat then let out another mewl of delight, then rolled onto his back, as if beckoning Rosa to touch its fluffy belly.
“This isn’t a trap, is it?” Rosa said, as if she was certain that Marius could understand her even in its feline form.
“Myaa.”
Rosa exhaled, then proceeded to tempt fate by running a hand across its belly…which promptly sprung the cat trap, as she initially expected.
All four paws ‘captured’ her hand, with the forepaws dragging sharp claws across the skin near her wrist.
“Ow! I knew it—” Rosa hissed in pain, rubbing at the growing welts on her scratch-streaked skin. “You’re still a gremlin, no matter what form.”
Grumbling, she pushed herself off the sofa then—after dabbing alcohol onto her shallow cat-inflicted scratches—set out to do her chores before tiredness could latch onto her for the rest of the night.
After a few minutes she managed to lay out everything a cat may need for a week’s stay: assorted cat food, litter box with a bag of litter sand, a few cat toys, among other sundry cat care items. “I think that’s about it.” Rosa then turned towards Marius, intending to let the cat familiarize itself with the location of the litter box.
However, it wasn’t by the foot of the sofa where she last saw it. “Marius?”
No response.
Refusing to give in to panic worsened by fatigue—there was no reason for her to worry: her apartment was perfectly sealed and there were no open windows, not even gaps underneath her door that even the sneakiest cat could slip through—Rosa took a deep breath and counted 10 to 1 slowly to calm herself down, just as Dr. Richter had instructed her after he witnessed her losing utter shit in front of him not too long ago.
She crept to the kitchen, thinking that the remnants of last night’s chicken nuggets may have attracted its attention. “Marius?”
There was still no hide nor hair of cat to be found, even as she moved the oven so she could peek behind it. “Marius…don’t you like chicken?”
She remembered just how upset she was for the stunt he pulled with her chicken nuggets this morning; yet Rosa was already more than willing to forgive Marius as long as she could find the cat safe and not caught up in something that could harm or injure it. “Marius?”
“Mrowr.” The sound was faint, and quite a few ways away from where she stood.
Is Marius upstairs?
Rosa quickly made her way towards her upstairs loft bedroom, making sure to proceed slowly with light footfalls to avoid startling the feline. “Marius…”
A sharp gasp escaped her lips as soon as she turned on the bedroom lights.
There was Marius, indeed, in all his slate-gray furry glory…perched on an opened drawer full of her underwear and lingerie.
Draped over its head were her still unused red silk panties, which she bought with the intention of having something to use...in the event of something spicy possibly happening during a totally platonic, just friends only date.
“Meow.”
“MARIUS. VON. HAGEN. PUT IT BACK. NOW.” Rosa, utterly mortified, lunged towards the cat without thinking.
“MROWR!”
Her loudly expressed humiliation may have started the Marius-cat; it jumped out of her reach, her silken panties still wrapped around its body even as it dashed downstairs.
“Marius!” Her face burning red with shame, Rosa clambered down after him in an effort to retrieve her Just in Case underwear. “Come back here!” Agony saturated her embarrassed cries. “PLEASE!”
“Mrowr.” Still intent on hiding away from Rosa and possibly any perceived hostility aimed towards it, the cat hopped onto the windowsill, trying to wedge itself between the glass wall and a large crystal vase full of water and freshly-cut roses.
Oh no. No. No!!
Her cries of “Marius” were completely drowned out by the sound of glass shattering onto the floor; myriad glittering pieces clattering across the smooth linoleum.
“Heya. Um. Luke?”
“...Hahaha what?” Rosa found herself laughing despite having traces of tears running down her cheeks. “You totally expected this to happen?”
A smile slowly formed on her lips as she listened to her childhood friend through her phone’s speaker. “Don’t tell me you’ve been hanging around waiting for me to call you.” A pause. “What?”
She laughed again as Luke told her that yes, he had been on a stake out in a nearby convenience store for a couple of hours as he waited for her SOS.
“Whew. I love you Luke,” she told her childhood friend, drunk in such utter relief. “You’re a lifesaver. Come on up, I’ll leave the door open for you.”
Her mood had lifted considerably as soon as she cut the call, placing the phone beside her on the sofa.
She then took a deep breath and buried her face in her hands, staying put on the sofa as she waited for Luke. Right. In a few minutes Luke will be here with some warm food, and he’ll help out with the clean-up…
Rosa stayed in that position—face in hands, breathing slowly and deeply—until she heard a slightly morose “Mrowr.”
After taking one last deep breath, Rosa peeled her hands away from her face, allowing herself to look at the gray cat sitting by her feet. It was no longer wearing her sinful panties—they must have been dropped somewhere as the cat scampered around for a hiding place—and instead had a piece of leftover chicken nugget clamped between its jaws.
Marius-cat then placed the chicken nugget by her feet.
“Meow.” It looked at her with wide, blown-out pupils, as if begging for attention.
Or forgiveness?
“Oh, you.” Relenting, she picked up the gray cat by the scruff and let it perch on her lap. “Are you trying to say sorry, Marius?”
“Mrrr.” It rubbed its body against her stomach, then promptly curled up on her thighs. The barely-there vibration of its satisfied purring soothed Rosa somewhat, and she gathered the cat into her arms, holding it close against her bosom.
“You think a chicken nugget is enough for me to forgive you?” A fingertip gently booped its pink, moist nose. “Nuh-uh. You have to behave, Marius. Not even being a cute cat gives you a pass!”
“Myaa.”
Rosa giggled. “Oh you.” She nuzzled the top of its head, cooing at him gently as she relished the soft fur tickling her nose. “You’re such a good boy after all, giving me that nugg—”
Neither Rosa nor Marius—Marius von Hagen, human—could comprehend what exactly happened, but there he was, in all his naked glory, lying over Rosa’s lap.
Both of them were too stunned to even react.
Rosa, in particular, was too stunned to even properly react to having a totally naked man, with all bits accounted for, on the same sofa as her.
Being a bit too large for the furniture, Marius’s arm dangled over the edge of the upholstery, his hand chancing upon something smooth that got caught in his fingers when he—in a rare flash of clarity—saw it fit to cover his delicate bits with both of his hands.
The sight of smooth, vivid red—Rosa’s missing panties—making contact with Marius’s manhood was the catalyst for the night’s climax.
Rosa screamed into high heavens, her brain now on the fritz with shock and humiliation. She frantically pushed and kicked Marius to the carpet. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY PANTIES?!”
“I DON’T KNOW!! I DON’T KNOW!!” Marius cried out as he shielded himself from Rosa’s frenzied kicking with one arm, his other arm desperately trying to protect what remained of his now shredded dignity. “I DON’T KNOW!!”
This was the tableau that greeted Luke as soon as he stepped into Rosa’s apartment.
Back in the NXX Headquarters, Conference Room. The next day.
“Miiiiissssssy. Look at me, pleaaaaase,” Marius groveled in front of Rosa, who was seated in her usual swivel chair, arms crossed and still refusing to look at him. “I didn’t mean it! I swear. God.”
There were many conspicuous traces of mauling evident on his person: several patches of gauze taped over particularly bad cuts—some of them Vyn had to redo himself as they were shoddily done by the same person who doled out the injuries—and medical tape wound over a portion of his left hand that for some reason held Rosa’s unspeakable scrap of garment all throughout the thrashing.
Marius laid down on his back by Rosa's feet as he continued to grovel, as if he was still a cat begging for a belly rub. “MISSY. PLEASE.”
A few paces away the other men looked on at the pathetic exchange unfolding right in front of them, with varying degrees of indifference on their faces.
“I told Rosa Marius would be better off living the rest of his life as a cat,” Vyn whispered as he watched, with barely held back amusement, Rosa’s mule-clad foot jab at one of Marius’s bandaged cheeks. “But even as a cat the brat still manages to be an absolute imp. Incredible.”
Luke shook his head. “Nah, it’s better that he’s back to normal.”
Vyn had to raise an eyebrow. “Interesting. I thought you hated Marius.”
“I can see why,” Artem passively watched as Rosa tried to flip Marius over with both her feet. “Kicking a cat is a criminal offense.”
“Aaaand Marius is fair game.” Luke said, with finality.