>The sun solves all problems?
>78, 117, 112 vs. DC 100 — Success
>Spendy x2

You can pounce on this. What's annoyed Ramsey so far? Putting the door in her chest. Putting the sun in the sky. How to annoy her really, really bad: putting a door in the sky?

Just kidding. (You have to say you're kidding, or Richard will get upset.) Way earlier, you tested The Sword on Monty's own shadow-arm, not jabbing it, just holding the flames near, and it thinned and he winced and told you to stop. Which was very interesting to you. Did it hurt? Why would it hurt?

Monty said it did hurt. Monty said he didn't know why it hurt. You asked to actually jab the arm, and did, and it didn't hurt when you did that— so it was the flames for certain, and the sun by extension. You asked Monty if he was really, really sure he didn't have any ideas about the arm.

From the look on him, Monty did have ideas. But he didn't volunteer them, so you offered yours. It wasn't that Eloise was wrong about it being rejection fluid— it was awfully black and goopy— but rejection fluid isn't shadowy. So something else is shadowy. And the arm showed up after you (famous heroine Charlotte Fawkins), er, dug all the skeletons out of his closet. Maybe you also put on a bit of a skeleton parade. And he was really upset about that, was mad at you for a good long while.

So maybe the shadowy parts are... bad feelings? Or negative thinkingness? Or... sort of... hopelessness? Like he felt as though he couldn't ever make up for whatever he did? Or couldn't escape it? Except that wouldn't work for Ramsey. Hmm.

Monty looked down and said, stiffly, that it could work very well. It wasn't as though Jean was delusional. She'd attest to every bit of pain she caused. Call her a bad person, she'd agree happily. Evil? Sure thing. Irredeemable? Huh? Redeemed how? Why? For what? She didn't care, was the difference. Between her and Monty. They were both irredeemable and both knew it but he cared and she didn't, about anything. Wasn't built to care. At least by the time he got to know her.

He had always thought that the arm— the gunk— all of it— was his crimes manifest, personally. He saw in your face that you didn't agree. (Richard was in your ear saying that "crimes" were not, metaphysically, a thing. That if anything God was pro-crimes.) You said that maybe the shadow bits were about evilness? But not how evil he is! No, no, no! How evil, how vile, how irredeemable he feels! You boiled those feelings up, and they reacted with the mask energies, or something, or his blood, or fluids— you weren't Eloise; you weren't paid to figure out how it worked. It did whatever it did, and a spooky arm was thus born-eth. Meanwhile, Ramsey thought being evil was funny, so she could summon infinite shadow claws out of her infinite evil reserves. Huh? Huh?

(1/2)