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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Interlude: Honoka's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Part 3
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    • Interlude: Honoka's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Part 3​

    "Stop that."

    Mari looked up from where she was scrubbing the kitchen floor. Kagome was glowering in the doorway.

    Silently, she set the brush and bucket against the wall and climbed to her feet.

    "I need some advice," he said. "There's a teacher being mean to Honoka and I'm going to deal with it."

    A flutter of nausea went through Mari's stomach. "Kagome...I can't."

    "Either tell me how to do it your way or I'll do it my way."

    She digested that for a moment.

    "What is 'your way'?"

    He narrowed his eyes. "Really?"

    She nodded thoughtfully. Decades of training at lying and manipulating everyone, including herself, came to the fore and automatically controlled her breathing so as to keep the worms of fear in her stomach from growing into snakes and chewing their way out into full-blown panic.

    There were ways. All it required was the choice and the words would be there. Whoever the target was could be destroyed, humiliated, terrified...so many ways. That was, after all, exactly what Mari did: Destroy, humiliate, terrify, manipulate. The self-disgust was by now so familiar that it was just a sense of exhaustion.

    She should do this. Honoka was a sweet child and deserved protection, so wouldn't that be a good reason to justify twisting someone's mind, filling it with crawling worms, and adding one more mark to her tally? It was fitting, wasn't it? It could even be argued that it would be a kindness to the target; Mari's way, evil and vile as it would no doubt be, would at least leave the man undamaged. Physically, anyway. Kagome might not be so kind.

    She had been enjoying these recent weeks of silence and hard work. The scrubbing, brushing, digging, cooking, kata, and other repetitive tasks allowed her to dwell in the peace of no-mind. There were no choices to make, no decisions, only clear orders that carried her from morning to night. She knew she had caused no harm and had even done a tiny amount of good. Not enough to even appear on the dripping-red ledger of her soul, but it was there. Could she throw that away, undo the tiny steps of progress and go back to what she had been?

    No.

    "I'm sorry," she said. "Please don't ask this." She cast her eyes down, forcing her body to stand limp. She knew exactly the effect she would evoke in this posture: disgust at her weakness. It would be easy to provoke a better response. If she clasped her hands and hunched her shoulders just a little she could look pitiful, melt Kagome's heart and leave him feeling guilty for asking. If she stood tall and met his gaze while tightening her lips a nigh-invisible amount and creasing her forehead the tiniest bit, he would feel grudging respect. Kagome...poor, sweet Kagome. He was so easy to manipulate that she couldn't not do it. All she could do was choose the message such that he knew it was none of his fault that she was useless.

    Kagome stared at her for long seconds, visibly yearning for her to crack, to come back and be her old manipulative, evil self. She refused.

    "Fine," he said at last. "I'll do it myself."

    He turned and left, his steps soft and silent as a hunting cat's.

    o-o-o-o​

    Shishido Yusei fumbled his key out of the lock and shoved the door open with his hip, edging inside with all four bags of groceries precariously balanced.

    "I'm home!" he called to the apartment he knew perfectly well was empty. The former habit had become self-mocking irony.

    He made his way to the tiny kitchen and set the bags down to free his hands so that he could open the stove and light a long splinter off the coals from the morning. He lifted the shade off the lamp so he could transfer the tiny flame, then adjusted the wick to minimize the amount of smoke and replaced the shade. The ceiling over the lamp was soot-stained; he really should clean that at some point.

    There was a note on the table.

    He froze, senses heightened as he probed his environment for threats. Nothing moved and there was no taste of another presence, so after a few moments he edged close enough that he could make out the kanji.

    The first lesson for teachers: Self-control. Grade: F- You receive 7 demerits. Fetch a slate and chalk, go directly to the roof for detention. Sit in the chair, no talking, no chakra. Write 'I will maintain self-control' on the slate, wipe clean, repeat. 4 hours. Disrespect or disobedience will bring additional demerits. —Your Instructor​

    "What the fuck...?"

    He leaned closer, studying the page more closely without touching it. It was low-quality paper, the sort of thing you could buy in a dozen places around the city. The writing was sloppy, probably written with the off-hand so as to disguise the source. He inspected it from all sides, then carefully picked it up and turned it over. The opposite side was blank.

    He stared at the page in confusion, then shrugged and dropped it back on the table before taking a turn around the apartment. It was a small place, so the search took less than a minute. No one. No other notes or unfamiliar objects on the desk, or the bed, or any of the bookshelves. The water in the jug was still pure and clean, the desk and bed undisturbed.

    Clearly, someone was pranking him. Maybe Matsunaga? He had always been a jokester. It was a bit of a weird prank, but whatever.

    Shrugging, he tossed a few splits of wood in the stove. Time to make dinner.

    Humming quietly, he opened the cabinet to put the rice away. There was a snake on the shelf.

    He leaped back, chakra surging through him as he snatched a kunai from his belt.

    The snake did not move. It simply lay there, coiled up, staring at him. The lamp gave enough light that Yusei could make out the distinctive red-and-blue stripes along the scales. That was a striped adder, one of the most dangerous snakes in Fire. One bite and Yusei would be convulsing on the floor for several agonizing minutes before mercifully dying.

    He waited, chakra singing in his veins, but the thing did nothing. After ten long seconds, Yusei slowly relaxed from his crouch. He backed out of the kitchen and went to the closet, pulling out the broom that he'd been putting off using for a bit too long. Going back into the kitchen, he stood as far away as possible and poked at the snake with the handle of the broom. They were ambush predators that could strike with blinding speed but they didn't cover ground quickly. If he could get it out of the cabinet and into open space then he could easily get behind it and kill it.

    The snake didn't react at all to the poking, it simply flopped loosely. More vigorous jabs and a bit of awkward raking sent it tumbling out of the cabinet in a ropey pile. It was, very clearly, stone dead.

    He approached cautiously, one inch at a time, and pinned the thing's head down with the bristles of the broom just in case it was playing possum. The head was the most dangerous part...except that damage sufficient to kill a striped adder would typically rupture its poison glands and flood the body, leaving its skin toxic. Perhaps lethally so, perhaps only damagingly.

    No, the snake was in fact dead. Someone had pithed it through the back of its head with a long, thin weapon, probably a senbon needle. Whoever it was, they had a frightening degree of skill; they had destroyed the brain without touching the poison glands, meaning the snake would be safe to touch. Moreover, they had written along the thing's belly: -1 demerit. Lesson: Punishments must be proportionate to the offense and must not impact the student's functionality. Command: Eat this. —Your Instructor

    He studied the writing for a moment, then fetched a pair of thick work gloves and used them to sink the snake's fangs into its own body so that they weren't exposed. He then dropped the dead reptile into the folds of his least-favorite shirt and tied it shut. He placed the bundle on the floor near the door. In the morning, before work, he would run it out into the woods. No way was he eating that thing. It looked like the poison glands hadn't burst, but he wasn't taking the chance.

    He cooked his egg-with-rice-and-carrot dinner on high alert, jumping at every creak of a floorboard or flicker of the lamp. Nothing else happened.

    Once the food was eaten and the dish cleaned and put away, he considered his course. He could read as he usually did but, all things considered, bed sounded better.

    He took a turn around the apartment, ensuring that the door was locked and the traps were in place on the windows. He did a final check, purely for the sake of paranoia, to verify that he was the only one present and there were no other surprises in the cabinets.

    He was checking the door one last time when the lamp he carried gave off a faint sizzle. There was a burst of smoke and then a human worth of copper-scented blood poured out, extinguishing the lamp and soaking his hand and pant leg before splashing across the floor. Yusei screamed and threw the lamp, a chakra-boosted leap carrying him back and away.

    He crouched in the corner, kunai in hand and eyes panic-wide. It was long past sundown and the lamp was extinguished, so the room was pitch black.

    It was probably minutes before he managed to uncurl himself and make his way into the kitchen to rummage up a candle. He lit it off the coals in the stove and held it aloft with a shaking hand that cast dancing shadows around the room.

    There was no one there.

    Cautiously, he edged around the corner so he could see the entryway and the door. There was blood everywhere, soaking indelibly into the hardwood of the floor and the plaster of the wall. The lamp was a shattered mess in the corner. There was an oilskin package next to it.

    He edged forward, water-walking so as not to step in the blood, and used the broom to poke at the package. It was long and rectangular, perhaps two feet long and two inches by two inches.

    With great trepidation, he unwrapped the packet and opened the box inside. It contained a thin willow switch and a note.

    A sinking feeling in his stomach told him that the switch he was looking at was the very same one that normally resided in the top right-hand drawer of his desk at school. The very firmly locked top right-hand drawer.

    With shaking fingers, he unfolded the note. 5 demerits for being truant at detention. You are above 10 demerits. Administer the switch to both palms before doing anything else. Full force, please. Lesson: Students must obey the rules. —Your Instructor

    He stared at the note, too frightened to move.

    o-o-o-o​

    GLOMP!

    "Hi, sensei!"

    "Hi, squirt!" He straightened up, hoisting her off the ground and spinning around so her feet flew out.

    "Eeeeeeeeeeee!!!!"

    Sadly, he only did two spins before plonking her down and ruffling her hair. "How was your day?"

    "Good! We learned about Lord First!"

    "Oh? Was that...what was that stinker's name? SheepyDough? SeepyDough?"

    She giggled. "Shishido-sensei, sensei. You know that."

    He looked completely innocent. Or, at least, tried. And failed, miserably. "Who, me? I don't know anything."

    "Yes you do!"

    "Do not!"

    "Do too!"

    "Well, okay. Maybe I know a couple things. Anyway, how was SheepyDough today?"

    She looked at him suspiciously. "Why?"

    "I just want to know if he's still giving you trouble. Was he mean to you?"

    She eyed him even more suspiciously. "No, sensei. He was fine."

    "Did he seem...I dunno, sick?" Her suspicious glare was clearly getting to him because he hurried to add, "No, really, there's something going around." He gave a demonstrative, and incredibly fake, cough.

    "He seemed fine, sensei. A little jumpy maybe. And tired, I think. He kept losing his place in the book."

    "Didn't have any trouble holding it, though?"

    "...No?"

    "Hm."

    Suspicion mode, superduper activate! "What did you do, sensei?"

    "Me? Nothing."

    Whenever Honoka was being shifty, Mom would cross her arms over her chest and tap her toe while giving her daughter a stink eye. Honoka applied the same tactics to Kagome-sensei and had to suppress a grin when he became visibly nervous.

    "Oh, hey, that reminds me, I brought cookies!"

    "Yay, cookies!" She eagerly snatched the proffered treat and snorfled it up, all suspicion forgotten.
     
    Last edited by a moderator:
  • Threadmarks
    • Velorien said:
    Interlude: Honoka's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Part 3

    ​
    "Stop that."

    Mari looked up from where she was scrubbing the kitchen floor. Kagome was glowering in the doorway.

    Silently, she set the brush and bucket against the wall and climbed to her feet.

    "I need some advice," he said. "There's a teacher being mean to Honoka and I'm going to deal with it."

    A flutter of nausea went through Mari's stomach. "Kagome...I can't."

    "Either tell me how to do it your way or I'll do it my way."

    She digested that for a moment.

    "What is 'your way'?"

    He narrowed his eyes. "Really?"

    She nodded thoughtfully. Decades of training at lying and manipulating everyone, including herself, came to the fore and automatically controlled her breathing so as to keep the worms of fear in her stomach from growing into snakes and chewing their way out into full-blown panic.

    There were ways. All it required was the choice and the words would be there. Whoever the target was could be destroyed, humiliated, terrified...so many ways. That was, after all, exactly what Mari did: Destroy, humiliate, terrify, manipulate. The self-disgust was by now so familiar that it was just a sense of exhaustion.

    She should do this. Honoka was a sweet child and deserved protection, so wouldn't that be a good reason to justify twisting someone's mind, filling it with crawling worms, and adding one more mark to her tally? It was fitting, wasn't it? It could even be argued that it would be a kindness to the target; Mari's way, evil and vile as it would no doubt be, would at least leave the man undamaged. Physically, anyway. Kagome might not be so kind.

    She had been enjoying these recent weeks of silence and hard work. The scrubbing, brushing, digging, cooking, kata, and other repetitive tasks allowed her to dwell in the peace of no-mind. There were no choices to make, no decisions, only clear orders that carried her from morning to night. She knew she had caused no harm and had even done a tiny amount of good. Not enough to even appear on the dripping-red ledger of her soul, but it was there. Could she throw that away, undo the tiny steps of progress and go back to what she had been?

    No.

    "I'm sorry," she said. "Please don't ask this." She cast her eyes down, forcing her body to stand limp. She knew exactly the effect she would evoke in this posture: disgust at her weakness. It would be easy to provoke a better response. If she clasped her hands and hunched her shoulders just a little she could look pitiful, melt Kagome's heart and leave him feeling guilty for asking. If she stood tall and met his gaze while tightening her lips a nigh-invisible amount and creasing her forehead the tiniest bit, he would feel grudging respect. Kagome...poor, sweet Kagome. He was so easy to manipulate that she couldn't not do it. All she could do was choose the message such that he knew it was none of his fault that she was useless.

    Kagome stared at her for long seconds, visibly yearning for her to crack, to come back and be her old manipulative, evil self. She refused.

    "Fine," he said at last. "I'll do it myself."

    He turned and left, his steps soft and silent as a hunting cat's.

    o-o-o-o

    ​
    Shishido Yusei fumbled his key out of the lock and shoved the door open with his hip, edging inside with all four bags of groceries precariously balanced.

    "I'm home!" he called to the apartment he knew perfectly well was empty. The former habit had become self-mocking irony.

    He made his way to the tiny kitchen and set the bags down to free his hands so that he could open the stove and light a long splinter off the coals from the morning. He lifted the shade off the lamp so he could transfer the tiny flame, then adjusted the wick to minimize the amount of smoke and replaced the shade. The ceiling over the lamp was soot-stained; he really should clean that at some point.

    There was a note on the table.

    He froze, senses heightened as he probed his environment for threats. Nothing moved and there was no taste of another presence, so after a few moments he edged close enough that he could make out the kanji.

    The first lesson for teachers: Self-control. Grade: F- You receive 7 demerits. Fetch a slate and chalk, go directly to the roof for detention. Sit in the chair, no talking, no chakra. Write 'I will maintain self-control' on the slate, wipe clean, repeat. 4 hours. Disrespect or disobedience will bring additional demerits. —Your Instructor

    ​
    "What the fuck...?"

    He leaned closer, studying the page more closely without touching it. It was low-quality paper, the sort of thing you could buy in a dozen places around the city. The writing was sloppy, probably written with the off-hand so as to disguise the source. He inspected it from all sides, then carefully picked it up and turned it over. The opposite side was blank.

    He stared at the page in confusion, then shrugged and dropped it back on the table before taking a turn around the apartment. It was a small place, so the search took less than a minute. No one. No other notes or unfamiliar objects on the desk, or the bed, or any of the bookshelves. The water in the jug was still pure and clean, the desk and bed undisturbed.

    Clearly, someone was pranking him. Maybe Matsunaga? He had always been a jokester. It was a bit of a weird prank, but whatever.

    Shrugging, he tossed a few splits of wood in the stove. Time to make dinner.

    Humming quietly, he opened the cabinet to put the rice away. There was a snake on the shelf.

    He leaped back, chakra surging through him as he snatched a kunai from his belt.

    The snake did not move. It simply lay there, coiled up, staring at him. The lamp gave enough light that Yusei could make out the distinctive red-and-blue stripes along the scales. That was a striped adder, one of the most dangerous snakes in Fire. One bite and Yusei would be convulsing on the floor for several agonizing minutes before mercifully dying.

    He waited, chakra singing in his veins, but the thing did nothing. After ten long seconds, Yusei slowly relaxed from his crouch. He backed out of the kitchen and went to the closet, pulling out the broom that he'd been putting off using for a bit too long. Going back into the kitchen, he stood as far away as possible and poked at the snake with the handle of the broom. They were ambush predators that could strike with blinding speed but they didn't cover ground quickly. If he could get it out of the cabinet and into open space then he could easily get behind it and kill it.

    The snake didn't react at all to the poking, it simply flopped loosely. More vigorous jabs and a bit of awkward raking sent it tumbling out of the cabinet in a ropey pile. It was, very clearly, stone dead.

    He approached cautiously, one inch at a time, and pinned the thing's head down with the bristles of the broom just in case it was playing possum. The head was the most dangerous part...except that damage sufficient to kill a striped adder would typically rupture its poison glands and flood the body, leaving its skin toxic. Perhaps lethally so, perhaps only damagingly.

    No, the snake was in fact dead. Someone had pithed it through the back of its head with a long, thin weapon, probably a senbon needle. Whoever it was, they had a frightening degree of skill; they had destroyed the brain without touching the poison glands, meaning the snake would be safe to touch. Moreover, they had written along the thing's belly: -1 demerit. Lesson: Punishments must be proportionate to the offense and must not impact the student's functionality. Command: Eat this. —Your Instructor

    He studied the writing for a moment, then fetched a pair of thick work gloves and used them to sink the snake's fangs into its own body so that they weren't exposed. He then dropped the dead reptile into the folds of his least-favorite shirt and tied it shut. He placed the bundle on the floor near the door. In the morning, before work, he would run it out into the woods. No way was he eating that thing. It looked like the poison glands hadn't burst, but he wasn't taking the chance.

    He cooked his egg-with-rice-and-carrot dinner on high alert, jumping at every creak of a floorboard or flicker of the lamp. Nothing else happened.

    Once the food was eaten and the dish cleaned and put away, he considered his course. He could read as he usually did but, all things considered, bed sounded better.

    He took a turn around the apartment, ensuring that the door was locked and the traps were in place on the windows. He did a final check, purely for the sake of paranoia, to verify that he was the only one present and there were no other surprises in the cabinets.

    He was checking the door one last time when the lamp he carried gave off a faint sizzle. There was a burst of smoke and then a human worth of copper-scented blood poured out, extinguishing the lamp and soaking his hand and pant leg before splashing across the floor. Yusei screamed and threw the lamp, a chakra-boosted leap carrying him back and away.

    He crouched in the corner, kunai in hand and eyes panic-wide. It was long past sundown and the lamp was extinguished, so the room was pitch black.

    It was probably minutes before he managed to uncurl himself and make his way into the kitchen to rummage up a candle. He lit it off the coals in the stove and held it aloft with a shaking hand that cast dancing shadows around the room.

    There was no one there.

    Cautiously, he edged around the corner so he could see the entryway and the door. There was blood everywhere, soaking indelibly into the hardwood of the floor and the plaster of the wall. The lamp was a shattered mess in the corner. There was an oilskin package next to it.

    He edged forward, water-walking so as not to step in the blood, and used the broom to poke at the package. It was long and rectangular, perhaps two feet long and two inches by two inches.

    With great trepidation, he unwrapped the packet and opened the box inside. It contained a thin willow switch and a note.

    A sinking feeling in his stomach told him that the switch he was looking at was the very same one that normally resided in the top right-hand drawer of his desk at school. The very firmly locked top right-hand drawer.

    With shaking fingers, he unfolded the note. 5 demerits for being truant at detention. You are above 10 demerits. Administer the switch to both palms before doing anything else. Full force, please. Lesson: Students must obey the rules. —Your Instructor

    He stared at the note, too frightened to move.

    o-o-o-o

    ​
    GLOMP!

    "Hi, sensei!"

    "Hi, squirt!" He straightened up, hoisting her off the ground and spinning around so her feet flew out.

    "Eeeeeeeeeeee!!!!"

    Sadly, he only did two spins before plonking her down and ruffling her hair. "How was your day?"

    "Good! We learned about Lord First!"

    "Oh? Was that...what was that stinker's name? SheepyDough? SeepyDough?"

    She giggled. "Shishido-sensei, sensei. You know that."

    He looked completely innocent. Or, at least, tried. And failed, miserably. "Who, me? I don't know anything."

    "Yes you do!"

    "Do not!"

    "Do too!"

    "Well, okay. Maybe I know a couple things. Anyway, how was SheepyDough today?"

    She looked at him suspiciously. "Why?"

    "I just want to know if he's still giving you trouble. Was he mean to you?"

    She eyed him even more suspiciously. "No, sensei. He was fine."

    "Did he seem...I dunno, sick?" Her suspicious glare was clearly getting to him because he hurried to add, "No, really, there's something going around." He gave a demonstrative, and incredibly fake, cough.

    "He seemed fine, sensei. A little jumpy maybe. And tired, I think. He kept losing his place in the book."

    "Didn't have any trouble holding it, though?"

    "...No?"

    "Hm."

    Suspicion mode, superduper activate! "What did you do, sensei?"

    "Me? Nothing."

    Whenever Honoka was being shifty, Mom would cross her arms over her chest and tap her toe while giving her daughter a stink eye. Honoka applied the same tactics to Kagome-sensei and had to suppress a grin when he became visibly nervous.

    "Oh, hey, that reminds me, I brought cookies!"

    "Yay, cookies!" She eagerly snatched the proffered treat and snorfled it up, all suspicion forgotten.
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    Ah well Mari. Also jfc that's hard to read.
     
    bigking321 said:
    Yikes.

    Looks like Mari won't be able to help much when the kids get back.
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    That does suggest that whatever happened with Akane/Tsunade they didn't succeed in helping her.

    How are we going to fix Mari?

    ...I think we need to fight fire with fire. Who's the very best social manipulation master in Leaf, and how do we convince them to manipulate Mari into not hating herself?

    Alternatively, we can find a therapist, but I don't know if any exist.

    Or maybe a mind reader could help?

    Thought: If Hazou doesn't know who to go to or how best to help Mari, what about approaching Ino with something like the following:

    "Ino, can I...ask you something in strict confidence? It's about someone I care about, and...well, I need advice but I don't want something private about them getting out to anyone. Is that alright?

    "Thank you. Um. So, someone I know isn't...well. Mentally. Something happened that sort of destroyed the way they thought about themselves. Now they hate themselves and nothing I or anyone else has been able to do has helped them see that they're not some sort of evil person. Even Tsunade hasn't been able to help. Do you know of anyone who could maybe help someone like that? I figure there must occasionally be ninja who are traumatized by the awful things they experience, and need help recovering so they can function again, so there might be people with experience handling that sort of thing. Given how much they know about people's minds I thought it might be someone in your clan, or they would know at least know who to go to."
     
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    Is there anyone else she respected and looked up to growing up? We obviously can't ask Hana to tell Mari that she's still a good person because Hana won't, but if some other Mist Jounin were to say it maybe Mari would be able to pull herself out of this the same way Hana dunked her into it.
     
    Inferno Vulpix said:
    Is there anyone else she respected and looked up to growing up? We obviously can't ask Hana to tell Mari that she's still a good person because Hana won't, but if some other Mist Jounin were to say it maybe Mari would be able to pull herself out of this the same way Hana dunked her into it.
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    Part of Mari's problem is that she thinks nobody who accepts her really understands all the evil things she's done, so she's just deceiving them into thinking she's a good person. That's part of why I think a Yamanaka might be a good idea here. Someone who saw everything that made Mari hate herself so much and accepted her anyway, maybe that would make a difference.
     
    MMKII said:
    Venom get!!
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    I was worried it would lose its potency quickly if we kept it outside of storage seals for any length of time, so I googled how long snake venom lasts. Turns out as long as you keep it in a stoppered vial away from air, basically forever. There's venom collected in 1935 that's still as potent as ever.

    It would probably go bad eventually after we took it out to coat a weapon with it or whatever, but that seems like a viable offensive option. It might go especially well with Keiko's fighting style, her knives are sharp but not terribly lethal all by themselves so her ability to put a tough target down without Pangolin help is limited. Stupidly lethal fast acting venom might be just the thing.

    In fact, she could coat a bunch of kunai with venom and keep them in a storage seal to take out in a moment when she needed them, I think.

    The venom might need some sort of thickening agent to make it stick to weapons properly, like grease or lard, but I presume ninja know all about what works for that.
     
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    I don't think there's any 'fixing' Inoue, like, she's right, she's monstrous.

    I expect it won't last too much longer though. People are pretty good at working through stuff.

    She'll either kill herself, decide to be less awful in the future, or just decide she is ok with her life choices.
     
    She seems to be stuck in a loop that her skill set, which do to her training and ninja specialty are based entirely around manipulation, are inherently evil in and of themselves as opposed to what she does with it or her intentions.

    And she can't help but constantly reinforce that belief because it's literally how she has been trained to see the world, as nothing but avenues of manipulation.

    Tough spiral to crack. She won't trust anyone's assessment of her because she can't trust that she isn't manipulating them. She had her trust in herself utterly destroyed. All that leaves is her actions, which she can't trust the intent of. Leaving her with literally just whatever work she physically does as the only way to show positive progress, which is a insanely unhealthy mentality.

    She is a utter liability right now and I have no idea what could be done to snap her out of it.

    Toiling away each day for a tiny sliver of self worth ain't it though.
     
    MMKII said:
    I'm waiting to do all my giant reaction posts at once. I have chapters 230-240ish written in a tab already. Backlog.
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    @Velorien @eaglejarl @OliWhail You may hype.
    Velorien said:
    He approached cautiously, one inch at a time, and pinned the thing's head down with the bristles of the broom just in case it was playing possum. The head was the most dangerous part...except that damage sufficient to kill a striped adder would typically rupture its poison glands and flood the body, leaving its skin toxic. Perhaps lethally so, perhaps only damagingly.
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    Well, would you look at that... this poison would aerosolize well, too.
     
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