Deviant Mage 10: Tarra and Mirr

The old cloak was now draped sloppily over both Stench and Apega, though more-so over Apega. Both their grimy forms were steaming faintly, as supernaturally empowered bacteria in all the dirt on their bodies worked to keep them warm despite the evening's chilly dampness. It wasn't raining, but the air was humid enough to wring out like a towel. Between the magic and their shared body heat, they hardly even noticed.

This comfort had its downsides. Each of them kept needing to prod the other awake.

Whatever they were doing by now, it didn't really feel like 'watch' was the right term, because it had become too dark and foggy to see much. Stench was mostly just staying quiet and hoping she'd notice something if it approached. Her supernatural senses were wide open, but she doubted that a foe would be so obliging as to roll in poo for her.

So far, she'd heard nothing more interesting than a faint suggestion of raised voices from the direction of the ex-serfs' camp a few times. The most interesting thing she'd seen was a faint suggestion of bluish illumination down in the swamp, almost too dim to see. According to Apega that was normal; just some kind of luminous fungus.

Surely, if something was going to erupt out of the swamp to drag them down into the realm of eternal divine punishment, then it would have already done so. Right?

Those ex-serfs ought to have their own people keeping watch (and if they didn't then she would have to correct that, and then she'd have something to hold over that bitch Milva). Those people were going to be her allies, and she needed to coordinate something with them, but that would only work if they were willing to listen to her. She was hoping that her earlier offer had been well-received. She needed to go up and check.

Just... not yet. Gods damn it, not yet. It was nice here.

"Hey, Stench?" Apega's voice startled Stench out of her thoughts. She'd been drifting off again hadn't she? "There's someone comin'."

Stench glanced up, and saw immediately what Apega meant. (Fuck, how had she missed that?) In the distance, towards the ex-serfs' camp, she saw a shape that was lit by a dim blue glow, visible as little more than a silhouette. It took her a moment to realize the shape was two human figures.

The figures were so close together it was hard to tell where one figure ended and the next began. The taller of the two was holding what appeared to be a jar in a fishing net, which was the source of that dim blue glow, exactly the same hue as the glow down in the swamp. The pair were slowly picking their way down the path towards her. Stench stood and waited for them.

(Apega took what she assumed a guarding position was supposed to be, just behind Stench. Gods damn it, she was used to being a killer, not a protector.)

When the rays of their lantern illuminated Stench and Apega's filthy forms, the two strangers paused, regarded the two for a moment with unseen expressions, then continued forward with a certain air of reluctance. Stench was pretty sure that she saw one of the taller of the two wrinkling their nose.

Their forms resolved into a girl and a boy, both who looked to have seen roughly as many years as Stench, and both of whom were very pretty. Their bodies were so habitually close that Stench assumed they had to be lovers. They both wore the remains of what had once been nice clothing: the girl wore a patched, frayed and faded black dress, and the boy wore the tattered and dirty remains of a suit whose splotchy pale colour had presumably been white at some point. (It felt like they were going for some kind of theme with their ruined finery, which felt mocking. Stench approved.) The girl was barefoot. They both had long unkempt black hair, though the girl's was longer. They also both reeked of long-unwashed clothes over bodies that hadn't felt the touch of soap in years, and their stink had a faint but unmistakable sexual musk to it. Stench immediately decided that she liked them.

"I bid you both welcome, honored strangers." Stench gave them a perfect curtsy with the tattered, crusty, slightly moldy remains of her once-green skirt. The formal greeting probably came off as absurd, which was the point. "Who might you be?"

The black-clad girl looked back and forth between Stench and Apega appraisingly. The dim blue light cast deep, strange shadows; most of her face was hidden in gloom, but her head was cocked. "I'm Tarra. An' he's Mirr." The girl pointed her thumb towards her male companion, who gave a forced smile and looked like he wanted to be elsewhere.

"It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Stench. This is Apega, my partner in crime, among other things" said the shit-witch, gesturing to the blonde girl behind her. (Apega hadn't fastened her cloak up properly, and the dirty cloth was hanging off her petite, shit-streaked, grimy bare body rather interestingly.) "Might I ask what brings you here?"

"Oh, uh, boss-lady wants us t'talk t'ya" said Mirr, in a thickly accented tenor voice. He was trying to sound confident. He was bad at it.

"Ah. Why won't she come talk to me herself?" Stench asked, her tone light, but with a certain edge to it.

"Don't trust 'erself to keep her temper 'round ya" said Tarra matter-of-factly.

So she'd sent these two down to be her spies. Interesting. Why them?

Mirr glanced at the privy pot. He raised his lantern a little, and the blue-tinted shadows shifted to reveal that yes, the pot was indeed empty. And, even in the dim light, it was clear that Stench's body was streaked liberally with fresh shit on top of her permanent layer of flaky grime. Tarra raised an eyebrow. Stench grinned at her, then shifted her hips a little, so the poop in her bulging knickers made audible squishing sounds. Tarra's other eyebrow rose up to join the first. Mirr made a disgusted-sounding 'ugh' noise. Tarra immediately and unsubtly jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. His face became a neutrally pleasant mask.

"I take no offense if you think I'm disgusting. It is my thing" Stench said. "You all have my thanks for using a pot for all this shit. Digging it up's a pain."

The two strangers stared at her for a moment, then turned to each other and started exchanging a series of looks and gestures that was probably more efficient at conveying information than actual speech.

"What did you come here to discuss with me?" Stench asked, interrupting their unspoken dialogue.

"Uh..." Mirr suddenly had the panicked look of an actor who'd forgotten his lines.

Stench smirked as he stood there dumbly. These two either weren't very good at this, or they were doing a masterful job of acting inept to get her to lower her guard. "Well!" she interrupted, "I've got a question for you."

"I dunno nothin'!" Mirr said automatically.

"Uh, what?" said Stench.

"Mirr, relax! Gods!" said Tarra.

"Look, I just want to know what the fuck actually happened down there." Stench gestured vaguely back towards Lanovale. "You know. With the revolt and all that? I've just been guessing about it all day! I was gonna go up and ask, but since you're here..."

Tarra and Mirr turned to look at each other again, and they exchanged a few more looks.

"Look, I promise not to cast a spell on you or throw shit at you or anything" Stench insisted. "And I'll keep my smell away from you. I can control my stink with my imagination." She made a flourishing gesture with her hands as she said so, trying to act silly in the hopes they wouldn't be so intimidated by her. Judging by the way they flinched, it wasn't working.

She had been telekinetically directing her stink up and away this whole time, but the cloud of fragrant air was fairly diffuse, and it only now occurred to her that her guests were currently inside it. And, in making that silly gesture, Stench had just raised her arms, baring her hairy shit-bead adorned left armpit, which added a new nuance to the reek that wafted off her filthy form. (Mirr seemed generally uncomfortable about being near her, but Tarra genuinely didn't seem to mind, which was interesting.) Hastily, Stench tightened her telekinetic hold on the stink-cloud. "And I got weed. You're welcome to have some if you like. I didn't get any shit in it, I swear."

For just a moment, Tarra's eyes widened slightly, and a ghost of a smirk formed on her lips. Their lantern rendered everything in high contrast shadows, and the light had been just right to emphasize the girl's flicker of expression, though she didn't seem to realize that.

Tarra pulled a bottle out from her pocket. "Ya wanna share?" To the resulting suspicious looks from Stench and Apega, she added. "It ain't poison. Promise."

"What's is it?" Stench asked.

"Applejack."

"Hoolheith shit?" Apega asked.

"Yep" said Tarra.

"So, poison" said Apega.

"It ain't killed me yet." Tarra uncorked the bottle and took a swing.

"I reckon they want you to get fucked up so you spill your guts to 'em" Apega whispered in Stench's ear.

"That's fine. There's plenty I want to tell them." Stench grinned deviously.

Apega didn't exactly seem thrilled as she considered that. "Don't say nothin' stupid."

"No promises."

Stench had brought a battered brier pipe, given to her by Blith. After rubbing her hands together to crumble the shit off her fingers, sucking them clean and wiping them on the moss, she filled her pipe up with pre-chopped weed that she'd brought in a battered little tin box, and then lit it with a little flaming ball of hardened shit. (She then stuck the scorched ball of crap back into her hair once she was done with it.) She puffed the pipe alight, took a long draw, pulled at the filthy, tattered layers of half-rotten cloth that barely covered her chest, deliberately baring her small, perky, grimy breasts (though she wasn't sure how much her guests could see in the blue-tinted gloom). Then, with a sigh, she exhaled the cloud of smoke down her scant cleavage, ensuring that the skunky smell of witch-hemp smoke added itself nicely to her fragrance.

Tarra and Mirr both watched Stench's casually gross display with variations on the same weirded-out yet perversely fascinated expressions.

Awkwardly, Stench's two guests began to tell the story of what had happened this morning down in the Lanovale fields. Neither was a good storyteller (though once Tarra had had some of the weed, her storytelling improved slightly). Stench still had to mentally stitch the narrative together herself as the two gave their disjointed accounts.

***

Basically, the Laneskews had been really sore losers after last night.

After Stench had not only defeated but embarrassed Lanovale's richest family, they had lashed out at anyone they could punish once the dust had settled. (Just as Blith had warned her might happen, dammit.) The family had somehow found out that a bunch of their human beasts of burden had been at Stench's party last night, and had decided they were to blame for everything.

All the Laneskew serfs had lived in 'Serf Residential Compound 02-F'. The compound was surrounded by high walls of pointy wooden stakes, and had been designed so that people on the outside could easily lock the whole place down completely. (Which begged the question of how so many of them had managed to attend Stench's party.) It wasn't officially Lanovale's prison, it was just where serfs risked getting assigned to if they disgraced themselves. The distinction was pretty arbitrary.

Before the sun had risen, the compound's gates had been barred. People had been literally dragged out of what passed for their beds, lined up against a wall and accused of being in league with Stench at spear-point. Most of the 02-F had no idea what they were even in trouble for, but lots of them hated each other, so things immediately devolved into a mess of accusations and grovelling, which the Laneskews quickly lost patience with, and so they just decided to punish everyone. And, since they were so furious, the family had decided that a simple mass-flogging wasn't enough catharsis.

(Stench involuntarily remembered the torture chamber she'd found in Laneskew Manor, and winced. She'd been trying her best not to think about it.)

In their anger, the Laneskews had been sloppy. Thanks to Stench, roughly half of their thugs were out of action, and the family had run the remaining half ragged. They'd all stupidly assumed that their serfs would meekly submit to this latest round of abuse.

Neither Tarra nor Mirr was entirely sure how it started, they just knew that there had been a bunch of screaming and suddenly there was a Laneskew guardsman lying dead and a serf had taken his billhook and seemed to know more-or-less what to do with it. This emboldened an ever-growing group, who managed to gather up a bunch of improvised weapons. Farm tools, boards with nails in them ripped out of their own walls, and rocks.

The Laneskews were slow to realize that they'd lost control of the situation. By the time they had, several of their people had been killed and their weapons taken. The mob of serfs had lost members doing this, but that just pissed everyone else off more. The Laneskews fled the compound and barred the gate, but it turned out there were several secret ways to get under the wall. A small group of the serfs had snuck out, and managed to flank the gate. Once it was unbarred, a mob of twenty-odd people had surged out.

Realizing that they were now facing a proper serf revolt, the Laneskews had turned tail and fled on horseback, leaving their goons to either stand their ground or flee on foot. The mob gave chase.

Tarra and Mirr hadn't seen how the revolt ended. It was news to them that the mob had gotten as far as the overseers' headquarters. Stench didn't share any of her and Apega's analysis as to what had happened there. She didn't need to.

So that was a bunch of idiots who were now either dead or about to be publicly executed at the hands of someone who was going to be delighted to have some people to make examples out of. The mob had left a trail of destruction several miles long, and Stench wouldn't have been surprised at all if they'd done awful things while on the rampage. She wasn't actually sure if she blamed them. Possibly because she was too busy blaming herself.

She had caused all that. Perhaps she could have done something about it, but it hadn't even occurred to her that it might happen until it was too late. As the revolt had raged away, she'd been wallowing down in an outhouse pit, happily getting shat upon.

All the people who had remained in Compound 02-F almost scattered in a panic when the mob set off on its rampage, certain that they would be punished by association once it was over. But the torn-nosed woman there, the eldest of the people remaining (and she was only like forty) had managed to take charge amid the chaos. She knew about this defensible, reasonably warm place in the mountains. She had managed to convince everyone to follow her up here, mostly by appealing to cowardice. She had been under no illusions that someone would eventually come after them, but at least by being here they'd have a position of some strength to negotiate from.

Absolutely nobody had expected Stench to be the first one to find them.

***

The four of them sat around the glowing jar, though Tarra and Mirr were still keeping their distance for the most part. They'd been passing the bottle around, and the weed-pipe had been smoked down and refilled a few times, as Tarra and Mirr told their tale.

Every time they'd finished a bowl, Stench had insisted on dumping the ashes over her head, then she'd tossed at her crusty locks to really work them in with all the other filth in her hair. She absolutely reeked of burnt witch-hemp now, but she reeked of so much else that it was just a fresh note to her overall aroma. (Her two guests hadn't said anything. Rather forcibly in Mirr's case.) Between the weed and a few sips of the applejack, her head felt nicely fuzzy. Though weed tended to feed Stench's anxiety, and she'd just been given a lot to angst about.

Neither Tarra nor Mirr had specifically blamed her for what had happened, but they didn't need to.

"There was like ten'a us watchin' ya roll in the mud down there" said Tarra, a little too loudly. She'd had the most to drink out of all of them, and it showed.

"Oh? You got to see the show? Excellent" Stench said. Her flippant words sounded hollow to her ears.

She'd been aiming to sow chaos on purpose, she just hadn't wanted to get anyone hurt unless they deserved it. But no, a bunch of people had been so unimportant that she'd completely failed to factor them into her plan! She felt like a mix of a monster and an utter moron. No wonder that torn-nosed bitch hated her.

Morosely, in the hopes of quieting how she was screaming on the inside, she took another swig of that applejack. She grimaced at the flavour and burn (she could just about pretend the taste of apples was in there somewhere), and decided that she preferred the screaming.

"Half the folks thought ya was jus' lookin' for somethin'!" Tarra explained, sounding darkly amused. "They ain't ever heard'a folks who get off bein' messy!"

"Heh." Knowing that she'd had an audience while she'd rolled in the mud with Apega ought to have pleased Stench, but any arousal she might have felt was buried under guilt. "And then somebody decided to try robbing us while we were so foolishly distracted by our 'search'?"

"Ya know, ya could'a just called up t'us" said Mirr. He'd pointedly had very little of the weed or booze. (Apega had made a similar effort not to over-indulge.)

"I was afraid you'd drop rocks on me. Needed to start our dialogue on my terms. Sorry."

"No ya ain't" Mirr muttered.

"That whole demon thing was a bit of a surprise..." Stench said, unable to really be cheered about the relative success of that particular ploy.

"No way that really happened" said Mirr.

Stench scowled at him. "Yeah, it did. Something grew out of the pool, and it saw me. It was like a plant with an eyeball. I figure it was some kind of sentry, but I don't know shit. Do you?"

Mirr looked blank for a moment, then shook his head, less as an answer to her question and more as a reaction to the crazy girl spouting nonsense. Gods dammit.

"Listen, fucknuts. Something freaky knows I'm here, and that could be a problem for all of us" said Stench testily. "Me and Apega might be able to fight it off, since I got all this shit to work with." To the resulting looks of vaguely disgusted confusion, Stench continued "I need fresh shit to do my best magic. The more the better." Feeling that she needed to demonstrate, she reached into her knickers and gathered a scoop of shit, which then started to slither between her fingers like a gooey worm.

At the display of her powers, she suddenly had Mirr's full attention. "That's why your drawers are full'a poop?"

"One of the reasons, and you know the other one" Stench said, smirking, as she dropped the writhing turd back into her underwear.

"Gods, that's gross..." Mirr's disgust amused Stench on some level, but it also annoyed her slightly. The guy obviously wasn't one for cleanliness himself. And he was a serf! He ought to be used to filth.

"Y'know, I fucked a guy one time who wanted me to shit on his chest after" Tarra said.

"Tarra..." Mirr moaned. Meanwhile, Stench squishily sat forward, suddenly intrigued.

"What? It aint' a secret or nothin'. I'm a whore" she said. "And so's Mirr."

"I... Only sometimes!" Mirr objected.

"Was wonderin' if you were gonna mention that" Apega said. "I heard'a you two. The Black and White Twins, right?"

"I hate that nickname. We ain't twins" Mirr grumbled.

Stench cocked her head slightly. Yeah, she could see how they'd gotten that nickname. Their faces were remarkably similar.

"Better'n mine..." said Apega.

Stench didn't even know that Apega had a nickname. She almost asked, but clearly her lover didn't like it.

"So how does it work with you being whores, when you're... I mean, you were Laneskew serfs?" Stench asked instead.

"Long story" said Mirr warningly.

"No it ain't" said Apega, and she leaned over to whisper in Stench's ear. "The warden fancied himself their pimp."

"Oh." She wasn't entirely sure what that meant. Anything she knew about prostitutes, she knew from books in Castle Lan's library, and what few books there were had been morality play bullshit that was a tad sparing on actual details. "Is that why your leader sent you two to talk to me?" Stench asked. "Because you're, uh, accustomed to deviant sexual behavior?"

"Ya mean we're a pair'a sluts? Sure" said Tarra nonchalantly. "I seen some crazy shit. Ya ain't even the first filth-lover I met. But holy fuck, girl."

Stench smirked, and put her hand over her heart. "I strive to be the best shit-slut I can possibly be" she said, her voice brimming with pride. Even though she'd meant that as melodramatic sarcasm, she realized as she said it that it was very much the truth.

A shame that she had to fight tooth and nail just be herself, and kept fucking things up doing it.

She deflated. "Look, I dunno if you'll believe me. Or if it even matters. But I'm sorry about... everything." Stench said, hanging her head. "None of what happened with you was supposed to happen."

Tarra and Mirr were silent for a long moment. "What were ya tryin' to do?" Mirr suddenly asked carefully.

Stench glanced up at him and looked him in the eye for a long moment before she spoke. "Oh, I was just trying to give a bunch of poor folks a good meal. And then have fun being a shit slut in front of an audience. And all as bait to lure the Lanovins into a trap!" She was starting to get a little overly dramatic again because of the weed, wasn't she? Oh well. "Yeah, I've got a bit of a vendetta against House Lanovin. I came up with the perfect plan to fuck with them! And it even worked pretty well! I just... I missed some details."

Stench's words didn't look like they're really sunken into Tarra, as she seemed mostly amused by Stench's theatrics. Mirr, though, digested what she'd just declared in faintly astonished yet thoughtful silence. Stench suspected he had a good memory.

Apega, meanwhile, looked faintly aghast at Stench having just blurted all of that out.

"What? I don't want any of that to be a secret" Stench said when she saw Apega's expression. She turned back to Tarra and Mirr. "I really am sorry about you getting swept up in all that. That's why I want to make it up to you. I figure since I stole all that gold, I need to spend it on something."

"Huh" was all Mirr could say.

"Oh, and that reminds me..." an idea had occurred to Stench. She turned to Tarra. "You said a guy paid you to shit on him? How much?"

Tarra blinked. "Eight stones" she said.

"What." said Mirr. "Tarra!"

Stench started rummaging between the tattered layers of fabric that had once been her dress. Instead of stones (which would have been fat discs of semi-precious stone, usually Lanovale river jade or Iosul agate) she pulled the world's dirtiest half-silver out from a particularly foul pocket. She flicked it to Tarra. "I don't got any low coins. Keep the change."

Tarra caught the filthy coin easily despite her intoxication, and she stared at it. Even dirty as the coin was and in the dim light, there was no mistaking it. She didn't seem to have any issue with how the fat half-circle of silver was partially encrusted in crap, but that might have just been because of astonishment at having been paid eight times more than she'd asked for.

"I don't gotta shit yet" she said as she pocketed the coin, while Mirr muttered "Gods, Tarra...", mostly to himself.

"No rush." Stench shrugged nonchalantly. "Just hypothetically, would you roll in dung with me if I paid you enough?"

"Hypo-what? Slut, that ain't a service I'm willin' t'offer" Tarra said.

"You're not a shit-lover?"

She shrugged. "Guess it don't bother me none, but I don't get off playin' with poo."

"You're not gonna enjoy shitting on me, even a little bit?" Stench asked with a devious smile. Tarra just shook her head. "You obviously like being dirty" Stench pressed.

"That's just me bein' good an' proper Lanofolk! Ain't some perfume stinkin' foreign prick. Ya filth-lovers make it weird."

Stench shrugged. "I don't get it, but whatever. I guess I'm too crazy" she said, her tone sarcastically self-deprecating.

There had been a question Stench had just been dying to ask, but she hadn't wanted to ask such an awkward question. But since apparently she was making things weird... "Hey, so there actually is something else I'm gonna need from all you guys if we're gonna be working together."

"Yeah, figured..." Mirr muttered.

"I'm gonna need everyone's shit from now on."

Another round of astonished silence followed. Stench smiled her best unhinged grin in the silence. "No one has to crap on me or anything. Though, I mean, if anyone does, I'd love that..." Her wicked grin turned lewd, as she imagined a lineup of twenty people taking their turn to use her as their latrine. But that wasn't likely to happen, was it? She shook her head to return to reality, and glanced over to the nearby bucket. "Just give me your privy pot when it's full. It's for my magic. Like I said, all my best spells need fresh shit."

"Just... what the fuck?" was all Mirr could say in response, as though her perfectly reasonable argument was the most insane thing he'd ever heard.

"You want me to have as much shit as possible if something goes horribly wrong. Which it might. Demons or no, you're in a world of trouble, and I'm your biggest stick right now. I can telekinetically control any shit that's within a quarter mile of me, and it's really strong. And I can control diseases" she added that last part almost as an afterthought, even though it was arguably the power she relied on the most.

At Stench's last claim Mirr's eyes widened. "Wait, so when ya said germs is your friends..."

"They're more like my servants, really. They'll lay down their lives for me." Stench made a mental note that Mirr actually knew what germs were.

"Meanin' what? Ya don't get sick?"

"Among other things, yeah. Means I get to be as nasty as I like and it's no problem" Stench said, with a certain spiteful pride.

"Can ya... can ya cure people?"

Mirr's suddenly earnest, hopeful tone threw Stench off. "Oh! Yeah. Only of infections, though." She blinked. "Hold on, is someone here sick? I can't tell unless I'm close."

"Uh, yeah. Sort'a." Mirr glanced back at Tarra. She didn't look like she was paying attention any longer, and her eyes were drooping.

"Oh... I was planning on going back up there, and I was gonna mention that."

"Right. An' now you're stoned" Mirr said, not sounding terribly impressed.

"Weed actually helps me use my magic. Just, uh... don't let me get distracted."

Mirr considered that. "Hey, Tarra? I think we're done here." He started to stand.

"You're going?" Stench asked.

"Yeah. We're gonna go talk t'Milva. That a problem?"

Stench blinked. Had she heard that name right? Surely not. "Uh... no. No problem." She shook her head as she said 'no', and flecks of dirt cascaded down to the ground from her hair. "I should go up there with you."

"You're covered in shit!"

"I'm always covered in shit! You're all gonna have to get used to that." She grinned her best unhinged grin.

Mirr groaned and briefly cupped his face with his palm. "Gods... Can ya gimme a minute to warn everyone, at least?"

"I'll give you five."

The pretty-boy man-whore clearly wasn't looking forward to having to explain that. "Fine, I guess. Don't expect folks t'like it! C'mon Tarra." He offered Tarra his hand. "Sure, coz..." she said sleepily back.

With a sigh, he hauled Tarra to her feet. She stumbled as soon as she was standing, and steadied herself by leaning on Mirr.

No wait, that wasn't just 'leaning'. Tarra's body was practically melting against Mirr's. Mirr seemed generally unhappy at the moment, but he clearly had no problem with Tarra's casual intimacy.

The sole source of light receded into the distance as Tarra and Mirr headed off. Stench and Apega were plunged into total blackness. Stench could sort-of see with her supernatural senses, but she had to remind herself that Apega was completely blind right now.

"Maybe I should have led with the whole disease-curing thing..." Stench said, a little sheepishly, once they were out of sight.

"Did you just pay half a silver for a whore to shit on you later?"

"One of my better ideas."

Apega responded with a helpless snort of laughter. Stench joined her, though it was more a laugh of relief than humour. Well, fuck; that had gone better than she'd feared it might. But it seemed that she had some work to do now.

She imagined going up to their camp as she currently was: her crusty body liberally streaked with fresh shit, her knickers bulging. The prospect of showing off at her filthiest normally would have thrilled her, but that sense of crushing failure still loomed over her, despite her best efforts at pretending otherwise. But she felt a note of hope through the gloom. She could finally do something to really, tangibly help these people, and she'd be doing it looking like this. Wouldn't that leave an interesting impression?