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[reserpentance]

"I need you to understand," says Pit Viper. She undocks the laptop screen from its keyboard and passes it over.

"I need just one other human being to understand that I am on my best fucking behavior right now."

On the screen is a cartoon drawing of a squirrel. The squirrel is smoking a blunt. It's wearing rainbow shutter shades. On its head is a hat referencing a meme that is, bare minimum, four years old. The whole thing is honestly hideous.

"This fucker," says Pit, stabbing a finger onto the touch screen with such emphasis it scrolls a bit, "is worth three hundred thousand dollars and I did not stutter."

She looks her audience in the eyes, her intensity of feeling about this somehow overcoming that her eyes are so goddamn weird these days.

"I could take this thing in about five minutes. Four if I go for the speedrun. And that I am not doing that right now is some fucking saintly behavior on my part and somebody has got to appreciate it."

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[reserpentance]

"I don't know why weed smoking animals is a whole thing with these guys," says Pit with an expansive wave of her hand, "but it is. It super is. There are so many cringey animals with weed."

The question gives her pause, though. She looks Rhapsody over.

"You're pretty human shaped to me," is her verdict.

[thunderboltsand_lightning]

"Smoking probably isn't good for squirrels," he says sagely with the wisdom of someone who has only a vague working knowledge of what weed is and may not have actually seen a squirrel before.

Rhapsody meets her gaze. Despite having weird eyes himself he doesn't really understand her shame (or shame in general, if we're being honest).

He smiles proudly at her conclusion, then turns back to the very confusing cartoon.

"Is it... supposed to do something?" things that are worth a lot of money usually do something, right?

[reserpentance]

Okay. Good. Talking about NFTs. Not talking about how easily Rhapsody takes her assurance that he's a human being, while Pit can barely assure herself that she is always going to be a human being. She can only clown about one of these topics.

"It's pretty complicated," she says, "but the short answer is no? The technology could do cool stuff, but mostly people decided they're a way to trade expensive pictures. And the pictures are like... some people decided they're expensive and the whole thing holds together cause enough people with enough money agree they're expensive?"

She smacks one palm into the other and slides them apart.

"Bam. Now you understand about art!"

Pit Viper. Snake mutant. Former supervillain. Friend. Philistine.

[thunderboltsand_lightning]

"Isn't art supposed to be pretty?" he's pretty sure he heard that somewhere.

Wait, maybe that was a bad thing to say.

"Not that I don't think it's pretty!" What if Viper thinks it's really pretty? She did call it art.

Pivot, quickly.

"I appreciate the fact that you're being good!" And there's the painful sincerity; coupled with that soft, painfully sincere smile.

[reserpentance]

Pit Viper laughs, she bends double and actually laughs hard. She likes the new kid. She can't help it. Nobody else generally approaches Pit with this kind of earnestness.

"Oh hey, I'm not being that good if I'm still looking," she says, recovering a bit. "And don't worry, I think it's butt ugly too. Honestly that's kind of the point? I used to have a collection of them."

[thunderboltsand_lightning]

"Does it matter if you look if you're not doing anything?" he's still figuring out this whole morality thing. There are a lot of rules and some people give contradicting ones and it's a lot to keep track of.

"No one yells at you if you only look at the last of the Lucky Charms, only if you eat it."

A pause.

"...Please don't tell Stella I ate the last of the Lucky Charms."

[reserpentance]

She makes a flippy arm motion dismissively. "Pssh, you're fine. If the crime costs less than like ten dollars, it doesn't even count."

Extremely professional villain thoughts on crime. They're clearer for her than her thoughts on morality, anyway.

"I feel like someone probably would yell at me, but it's whatever. I'm used to that."

She is extremely tough and cool and fine at all times and nothing bothers her ever because she is so tough and cool.

[thunderboltsand_lightning]

Rhapsody makes note of that for later. Pit is always giving him good advice, he thinks she's really tough and cool.

He frowns when she talks about people yelling at her.

"But you've been doing good guy stuff!"

It makes sense that people would yell at her when she was doing bad things, but Pit isn't doing bad things anymore, so people shouldn't be yelling at her.

"And I think you're doing a really good job!"

[reserpentance]

"....Thanks, Rhapsody," she says. She could just leave it at that. It would be easier.

But for a moment, she's honest.

"Good and evil is not that complicated, I don't think? But what people believe about it is."

[thunderboltsand_lightning]

"People tell me a lot of different things about what good means, and some of it doesn't make sense with other stuff, but I'm pretty sure that trying not to be bad counts."

And Pit tries really hard! Even when she doesn't want people to think she is. Especially then.

"I was made to be bad and hurt people but you guys found me and kept that from happening. And now I'm trying to be good, and I wouldn't be trying if it wasn't for you. Maybe when you do nice things for people and then they do nice things it's almost like you did two nice things!"