I do not own KHR, that would be Akira Amano, and the cover was created with Rinmarugames's Haunted Portait Creator

The girl was quiet. She sat in the corner underneath the tall narrow window that looked down into the courtyard, half hidden behind the gold tinted wooden bookcase against her left shoulder. A few strands of her dark auburn hair were escaping the braid hanging over her shoulder, falling in front of her face as she leaned forward towards the book resting in her lap. She leaned back as the fingers of her right hand slowly and carefully dragged themselves down the page and tucked themselves under to flip it. She would then repeat the slow process of leaning forward towards the book and leaning back as she flipped the pages silently.

She treated their books with care, was willing to pay to infringe upon their territory, and, most importantly, was blissfully quiet, leaving them to their work without attempting to engage them in meaningless conversation. These were the only reasons that Mammon let the little Cloud escape the loud, echoing, and never ending chaos of the Varia mansion by curling up in a corner of their office. It had absolutely nothing to do with the curiosity the girl presented to them, that one who appeared to be ready to break with the next breath of wind could become the Cloud Officer so quickly. Nothing to do with it at all.

Still, they couldn't help but remember, couldn't help but analyze, the girl's actions and reactions, searching in vain for a logical explanation for the girl who acted nothing like a Cloud, except when she did.

When they had first seen her, they had been balanced on the Prince's shoulder beside the other officers, looking out over the sea of newly recruited mooks, all of whom were clamoring for attention from the Varia's finest. She, unlike the others wishing to join the Varia, had been quiet, silent in fact, standing off to the side with her arms crossed tightly over her chest and cowering back every time someone walked passed her, be they mook or member. She had been an anomaly in the crowd, looking up at the officers with bright, wide, blue eyes. She had had her bottom lip tucked underneath her teeth the entire time Squalo had put the fear of God, or perhaps more accurately the Devil, into the mooks. The officers had then walked, Mammon using their Mist flames to float, through the crowd, collecting their share of the mooks which to any not in the know would have appeared random but those with the knowledge of Dying Will Flames would be able to see each officer pick their fellows. It had been Mammon who approached the girl first, assuming she was a soft Mist. They remembered pausing and shaking their head before moving on when they felt the newly active Cloud flames lashing around the girl nervously. She was Ottabio's to claim, not theirs.

It had only been a short time into the mooks' training, Ottabio having constantly complained about how the girl wouldn't speak and would flinch when anyone raised their voice within her vicinity, when the Cloud Officer had been late to a meeting. They remembered Squalo complaining loudly as he marched from the room, the others following the Rain carefully, as he searched for the traitorous Cloud. Why none of the Clouds had disposed of him in the six years since the Cradle Affair was unknown and had been constant source of frustration to the other officers who could do nothing about it. That was when they found her, an unnamed mook standing in the Cloud Officer's office, blood drying on hands that were barely clenched by her sides as her chest heaved and her eyes sent intangible, piercing daggers across the room towards Ottabio's cooling body. She had turned to the group with her chin tilted up and blue eyes blazing. Lussuria had been the one to find her weapon of choice when he had slipped past Squalo to examine the body: a letter opener. The girl had withstood Squalo clapping her on the back and telling her that she couldn't be worse than Ottabio had been, Levi's judgemental mutterings about how he would have done it better as he turned to leave, the Prince's bloodthirsty chuckles, and Lussuria beginning to clean up the mess, but it had been Mammon, who floated onto the girl's shoulder, who had remembered that most would breakdown after such an action and had offered a place for the girl to do just that. It had been in that very corner that the newly minted Cloud Officer had quietly sobbed into her knees, away from the prying eyes of her fellow Varia.

She had become louder as the Cloud Officer, waking up her division, which had grown lazy over those six years, with a loud scream of "Wakey wakey bitches!" and the now familiar clanging of frying pans against bed frames as she charged through the barracks-like sleeping quarters at the crack of dawn. They would have charged her for waking them up inadvertently if she hadn't gifted them with the sight of sleep deprived Clouds trying to kill their young Officer and failing, tripping over each other and slamming into walls due to their own division amusing themselves with disguising the doors with illusions which, of course, caused damage to the walls and allowed them to charge the Clouds at fault.

Still, the girl was inherently a quiet soul who sought out peace amidst chaos, not in her own office but in theirs.

"Myu," they said, flipping another report over, "you may read aloud if you wish."

The girl looked over at her fellow Officer with a soft, slightly twisted, smirk. Blue eyes danced with amusement as she turned back to her book, taking the request for what it was and reading in a low, even voice that was quiet enough so as not to disturb Mammon but loud enough for them to enjoy the story as well.

"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost, the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost, from the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring, renewed shall be the blade that was broken, the crownless shall again be king."