The distant, booming echo of the explosion was still hanging in the air when Ren's hands became a blur of motion. With the swift, practiced precision of a master craftsman packing away his most precious, and volatile, tools, he gathered the demonstration Visions. The Pyro gauntlet, the Hydro brooch, the Anemo wristlet—each was carefully, securely, placed back into its padded case. He snapped the latches shut just as the door to Albedo's laboratory burst open.
"We're okay! Nobody is hurt!" Klee's cheerful, slightly soot-covered face poked into the room, followed by the tall, impossibly calm, and deeply amused, figure of Kaeya. It would seem, she decided to run all the way from the lake upto the headquarters, just to inform Jean that no one was hurt.
"It seems our Spark Knight was merely conducting a small, unscheduled test of the local fish population's swimming speed," Kaeya announced with a smooth, charming drawl, his single, periwinkle eye twinkling with a mischief that suggested he had been a willing, if not entirely responsible, observer.
Klee, her initial, perfunctory safety report delivered, then properly scanned the room. Her crimson eyes, wide and innocent, passed over Jean, over Albedo, and then they landed on Ren.
She froze. Her small, soot-smudged jaw dropped. The world, for a single, silent, and incredibly dramatic, moment, seemed to stop.
"PIXIE PRINCE!"
The shriek was a sound of pure, unadulterated, and explosive, joy. She launched herself across the laboratory like a small, red cannonball, and before Ren could even fully stand, he was enveloped in a hug so tight, so enthusiastic, and so full of a desperate, happy energy, that it almost knocked the wind out of him.
"You're back! You're really back!" she squealed, her face buried in his shoulder. "I missed you so much! Did you miss me? Did you bring me any presents? We have to go play! Right now!"
Jean, who had been watching the scene with a mixture of fond exasperation and dawning, parental dread, finally found her voice. The brief, happy reunion was over. It was time for justice.
She cleared her throat, a sound that was quiet but carried the absolute, unyielding authority of the Acting Grand Master. "Klee."
Klee froze, her happy wiggles ceasing in an instant. She slowly, reluctantly, pulled away from Ren, and turned to face Jean, her expression a perfect, practiced mask of wide-eyed, angelic innocence. "Yes, Master Jean?"
"You just set off a bomb," Jean stated, her voice dangerously calm. "A rather large one, from the sound of it. In a lake that is well within the city's immediate vicinity. What," she asked, her voice dropping to a low, tired, and completely, done-with-everything, tone, "have I told you about fish-blasting?"
"But… but the fish were being sneaky!" Klee protested, her excuse both creative and utterly nonsensical. "And Dodoco was sad! He needed a big boom to cheer him up!"
"Solitary confinement," Jean said, her voice a final, unarguable decree.
Klee's face crumpled. The joy of her reunion with her pixie prince was about to be snatched away. "No!" she wailed, her eyes instantly filling with tears. "Not now! Ren just got back! I want to play with Ren! Please, Master Jean! Please, please, please!" She ran and hid behind Ren, clutching his tunic, using him as a small, and very cute, human shield.
The sight of the two of them, the small, tearful, and soot-covered Spark Knight and the quiet, beautiful, and now very much in the middle of it, Pixie Prince, was a weapon of mass adorableness against which even the Acting Grand Master's resolve was beginning to waver.
It was then that the interventions began.
"Oh, Jean, dear, must you be so strict?" Lisa purred, gliding forward with a lazy, sympathetic smile. "He did just get back. A brief, supervised playdate would hardly cause the collapse of the city. Think of it as a… psychological experiment. To observe the calming effects of our little prince on our little spark."
"She has a point," Kaeya chimed in, his arms crossed, a roguish smirk on his face. "It's a matter of international diplomacy, wouldn't you say? A welcoming gesture for our esteemed guest. To punish his closest friend the moment he arrives… it's hardly good form."
Albedo, who had been silently observing, added his own, calm, logical weight to the argument. "His presence does seem to have a statistically significant, mitigating effect on her more destructive impulses. A period of supervised interaction could prove beneficial for her long-term behavioral development." Even Sucrose, from the back of the room, gave a small, shy, and very supportive, nod.
Jean looked at the united, smiling, and completely unhelpful, faces of her most powerful and trusted subordinates. She let out a slow, and deeply weary, sigh. She was being outmaneuvered, and she knew it. She looked at Ren, her last, best hope for order in a world of chaos.
Ren, feeling the weight of her gaze, and the hopeful, tearful trembling of the small girl hiding behind him, stepped forward. "I'll watch her, Master Jean," he said, his voice calm, steady, and full of a quiet, reassuring confidence. "I promise. I will make absolutely sure that she does not blow anything else up today."
The promise, so simple, so direct, and coming from the one person in the room who seemed to have a genuine, almost magical, control over Klee's chaotic energy, was the final, deciding factor.
Jean's stern resolve finally, blessedly, crumbled. "Fine," she conceded, the word a sound of pure, exhausted defeat. "For today. But you," she said, pointing a very stern, very serious finger at Ren, "are now officially on Klee-duty. She is your responsibility."
"Yes, ma'am," he replied with a small, grateful smile.
Klee, hearing the verdict, let out a whoop of pure, triumphant joy. "Yay! Come on, pixie prince!" she shouted, grabbing his hand and immediately starting to drag him out of the lab. "I have to show you my new treasure! It's super shiny and it makes a big sparkle when you drop it! I was going to bury it in the Whispering Woods, but now we can go together!"
Ren, being pulled along, his mind immediately, and with a sinking, familiar dread, translating "shiny" and "big sparkle" into "a new, even more powerful, and probably very unstable, bomb," managed to dig his heels in for just a moment.
"Wait, Klee, wait!" he said, pulling her to a stop. He looked at her soot-covered face and her slightly singed clothes. "How about this," he suggested, his voice a calm, reasonable, and very clever, delaying tactic. "You go and have a nice, warm bath and get all cleaned up. And I'll just put my things away in my room. And then, after that, we can go and find the perfect spot for your treasure. Okay?"