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The garde that rushes into the Palais Mermonia is panting and out-of-breath; he looks like he’s just run a half-marathon. He bursts through the doors of Neuvillette’s office, ignoring Sedene’s cries for him to stop.
“Monsieur… Neuvillette… emergency… Meropide…” He collapses on the floor, clutching his stomach for dear life.
Neuvillette has heard enough. He grabs his cane from where it rests on the wall just adjacent to his desk and scrambles for the door. The last thing he hears from the poor, afflicted garde before he passes out on the floor is “... Sigewinne…”
Sigewinne? If she was involved, Neuvillette would have to hurry even more. He would never let any harm occur to that darling girl on his watch. If something really was happening to her, Wriothesley would have a lot of explaining to do.
Neuvillette feels as if he’s stepped directly into one of Furina’s acclaimed horror films. As he progresses, the scene around him only seems to get worse and worse.
First of all, at the entrance to Meropide, there is a conspicuous absence of a security garde. There is ALWAYS a security garde. What could possibly be occurring down there that necessitates even the garde as removed from the action as they could possibly be going down there to put a stop to it?
He takes the elevator downwards and enters the fortress only to see poor Marette’s desk lying on the floor, seemingly flipped over. Papers are scattered across the room with no rhyme or reason to their placement, indicating that some great fight occurred in the room.
Neuvillette storms through, worry clouding his mind. He needs to get to Sigewinne and Wriothesley. What if they had missed some Fatui members and they had chosen now to stage their coup? ‘No,’ he painstakingly reminds himself, ‘the Fatui are no longer here since the prophecy has already run its course.’
Then what could it be? Perhaps some inmates had gotten feisty? No, the Duke would have subdued them easily. That man is many things, but above all he is competent at his job.
Neuvillette shouldn’t waste time on contemplation when Wriothesley and Sigewinne are so clearly struggling. It would not do for them to get injured. The Fortress’s operations relied on them. Neuvillette relied on them.
He sighed internally and pressed forward. He would find whatever was causing this ruckus and unleash the full might of his power as the newly-reborn Hydro Sovereign on it.
The more ground he covers, the more destruction he sees. Gardemek parts. Overturned cafeteria trays. A pile of… crumbs?
At long last, he reaches Wriothesley’s office, fully prepared to break down the doors if need be - but they are already slightly ajar. Worried yet ready to fight, Neuvillette pushes through.
Immediately, he’s faced with the sight of Wriothesley, thankfully unharmed, holding a blanket open between his arms. Piled in the middle of the blanket is a stack of cookies.
A loud CRASH! draws Neuvillette’s attention to the banister of the stairs leading to Wriothesley’s office, where a small blur resides. It is sliding down the railing at high speed, throwing a tea saucer as it does.
Wriothesley winces. “My tea saucer.”
Ah. This blur must be the culprit of the destruction he had witnessed.
Neuvillette pushes Wriothesley behind him and extends his hand in one fluid motion. “For your own safety, Your Grace, remain behind me while I deal with this… aberrant.”
“Neuvillette?” Wriothesley asks.
Neuvillette gathers his Hydro energy in one palm, ready to fire at the slightest indication of the being decreasing its speed.
As it rapidly approaches the bottom of the banister, Neuvillette prepares to strike. This is his chance.
“NEUVILLETTE, NO!”
Wriothesley grabs his hand and yanks it further in the direction of his office. His Hydro blasts straight in, causing a resounding CLANG! noise.
Wriothesley winces. “My teapot,” he says.
The accursed destruction gremlin is still on the loose. It has now jumped to the ceiling banister and is rocking back and forth rapidly. Neuvillette wishes it would fall.
“Your Grace, what is the meaning of this? I was on the verge of capturing this being.”
“Neuvillette… that’s Sigewinne.”
“Repeat the sequence of events to me again.”
“So,” Wriothesley starts. “You know Sigewinne’s usual diet? Milkshakes, whatever you and her sisters make, on occasion some prison food like mashed potatoes? Well, she decided she wanted to try something different today, for whatever reason. Which is fine. We should all shake it up and try something different every once in a while.”
“Yes, but it seems that her food of choice was… cookies?"
“Well, she wanted a cookie. I even asked her, you know. Since she doesn’t have this kind of thing often, I asked her ‘Are you sure you should be eating that?’ and she said yes, and clearly she’s the nurse here, so I trusted her. And I’m sure one cookie would have been fine.
“Problem was.. she didn’t stop eating them at one. I originally let her continue, since she deserves a treat once in a while, but at about five I thought it was high time to stop her. That’s when she really went feral.”
Neuvillette looks at Wriothesley disapprovingly. “Five cookies? That’s the limit you set for when over-consumption would become a problem?”
Wriothesley looks down, a little guilty. “I guess I didn’t realize just how much sugar she was eating. Those things are PACKED, you know."
“Yes, and with her body size as well as her unique Melusinal metabolism, it would comprise a much larger proportion of her bloodstream. It does make sense that she is reacting far more strongly to sugar than you or anyone else typically would. Do not worry, Wriothesley. I do not blame you for this incident.”
Wriothesley nods. “That’s good to know, given there’s nothing I can do to stop it now that the train is off the tracks. She won’t listen to reason. I hoped that calling you here and asking you to speak to her would knock some sense into her head. Worth a try, right?”
“Certainly,” Neuvillette responds.
Wriothesley nods, a little distracted. “My garde… I assigned him to deliver the message to you, but on his way out Sigewinne began to chase him. Poor man. Hope he recovers from the shock in the next ten years or so.”
Sigewinne chooses that exact moment to giggle and lunge for the open door just behind the two men.
“SIGEWINNE, NO!
They have lost Sigewinne.
Neuvillette is quite literally running on his last remaining brain cell. He tries his best to think of relevant locations where Sigewinne might head. In her half-braindead state, she’s most likely to head somewhere familiar and comforting to her so that she can jump off the walls in excitement and destroy it.
There’s only two places that fit the bill. One is Wriothesley’s office, which she just left ; the other is the infirmary.
Wriothesley is half a step ahead of him, metaphorically and literally. “Let’s go to the infirmary.”
They exit Wriothesley’s quarters and enter the hallway just outside to be met with a clamor. A horde of terrified people, inmates and gardes alike, are pleading for the Duke to do something about their terrorizer. Wriothesley does his best to calm them. “We are in fast pursuit of the culprit. Which direction did sh- it head?”
A couple of the inmates at the front of the pack point trembling fingers to their right. Wriothesley immediately sets off, Neuvillette hurrying to follow in his wake.
This is truly Wriothesley’s territory. He walks purposefully and radiating assurance, effectively showing everyone around him that he is not to be crossed. Neuvillette cannot help but admire the aura he so effortlessly projects.
Neuvillette suddenly snaps out of his Wriothesley-induced daydreaming when he sees the state of the hallway Sigewinne traveled through. It’s a mess - half the paint is peeling off the walls, railings are dented out of shape and there are some claw marks in the floor . How did they get there? Neuvillette genuinely hasn’t the foggiest.
Eventually, they catch up to the mischievous Melusine, who is bouncing around on a mattress in the infirmary with all the fervor of a thirty-year-old clerk receiving a promotion to judge. This is to say, quite a lot.
Wriothesley leans closer and murmurs in his ear. “Taunt her with sugar. I’ll grab her from behind.” He presses a plastic bag of sugar cubes into Neuvillette’s hand and disappears from sight.
Neuvillette stares at the bag in his hands.
“Uh. Sigewinne.”
Sigewinne’s head snaps towards him so fast he’s afraid she must have cricked her neck.
He hesitantly shakes the packet in the air. “I have… sugar…”
At the very mention of sugar, Sigewinne jumps six feet into the air. Correction: she jumps six feet in the air while traveling twelve feet towards him . He moves to dodge, just as large, burly arms reach out and sweep up the (now thrashing) Melusine.
“You, missy, are drinking three gallons of water and diluting that sugar out of your system right now.”
“I’m so sorry, Your Grace! I don’t know what came over me!” Sigewinne says, legs kicking as she cradles a cup of tea.
“Eh,” Wriothesley grunts noncommittally. “Sometimes I do the same thing when I drink too much caffeine.”
Sigewinne looks at him disapprovingly and opens her mouth.
Wriothesley quickly interrupts. “Uh uh, Sige. You have no right to lecture me after what happened today. We don’t even know what those claw marks came from or how they got into the floor!”
Sigewinne smiles serenely. “Well, I suppose I learned how to cause mayhem from the best.”