Chapter 282: 283: Grounded

“Ow!” yelps Fresh, receiving another flick to the head. This is her sixth. Jubilee, sitting there, keeps their hand where it is and flicks her again. “OW! Jubileeee~!”

“Oh, please! Stop being such a big fucking baby,” they say. “As if that actually hurts.”

Fresh frowns. Okay. To be fair, maybe it doesn’t really hurt. She might just be saying ‘ow’ more instinctively than because she actually means it. Jubilee flicks her again.

“Ow!”

“I’m not going to stop until you learn your lesson,” says Jubilee, flicking her again.

Fresh, having been confined to her bed, sits upright. “I didn’t do anything!” Jubilee flicks her again. Getting the message, she lays back down, sliding back down beneath her blanket.

“Because of you, we’re short one employee!” scolds Jubilee, flicking her again.

“But I just wanted to go into the dungeon to check on Shamrock!” states Fresh, taking her punishment like a champion.

“Shamrock doesn’t need you to fucking check on him!” lectures Jubilee, pointing at the man who is sitting on the other side of the waist-high stone wall, on the foot of Basil’s bed, cleaning her leg with a damp rag. “Shamrock is the one who does the fucking checking. Look at him!” yells Jubilee, pointing at the giant of a man who lifts his gaze for a moment, before looking back down.

“But Basil came with me!” argues Fresh. “I didn’t go alone and you didn’t want to come with us.”

Jubilee lifts their hand again. “Oh, so now it’s my fault?”

“Jubilee!” says Fresh. “That’s not what I’m saying!” says Fresh. “OW!”

Jubilee glares at her. “You two dumb-asses didn’t think that going down to level forty by yourselves was a bad idea?”

“Of course we thought that!” counters Fresh. “And we were on floor forty-one!”

Jubilee flicks her again. “Then why didn’t you stay at the entrance?”

“I don’t knoooow~” howls Fresh, grabbing Jubilee and hugging them and while this might appear to just be more of her rampant emotionality, it is actually a clever ruse on her part to avoid getting flicked again.

Jubilee sighs, placing a hand on her head. “Dumb-ass,” they say, shaking their head. “That goes for you too, by the way!” barks Jubilee, turning their head around to look at Basil. Fresh only sees a weak hand rise up above the stone-wall, giving them a thumbs-up. “Just you fucking wait till I get over there!” snaps Jubilee. “I’m pissed at her,” says Jubilee, pushing Fresh off of themselves. “But you really should have known better. Fuck’s sake,” they hiss, getting up. Basil’s arm flops back down to her bedside.

If there was any further punishment to be doled out by Jubilee, it never seems to arrive however, as rather than going to Basil’s bed to flick her some too, Jubilee instead makes their way to the kitchen and grabs the frilly apron, cursing all the while.

Fresh blinks, sitting upright.

“If you fucking leave that bed, I’ll tear your eyes out and shove them into a chicken’s ass!” yells Jubilee in what might be the most stern tone she has ever heard them take. Fresh immediately flops back down into her bed, pulling the blanket up. Apparently, she’s been grounded.

Is this a reasonable punishment for an adult, let alone one that could be enforced? No, obviously not. But they’re going on the honor-system. She did something dumb, so she sits there in her bed and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

Jubilee throws Shamrock the apron so that he can take care of making dinner ready, which is apparently going to be some kind of crab and coconut soup. They meanwhile go outside to find a physical-healer of some kind.

After the two of them, Fresh and Basil, had gotten out of the dungeon, Shamrock had carried them back to the shop. She realizes that they must’ve looked quite the mess. Basil’s leg needs to be professionally tended to and she was covered in the priestess’ blood and gunk from head to toe. Actually -

Fresh looks down at herself.

- she still is.

“Shamrock?” she asks, looking up. “Can I take a shower?” It’s a good thing the mattress is water-proof.

He looks at her from the kitchen and then nods once. “Shower. Then bed.”

“Okay,” relents Fresh, getting up and walking past Basil’s bed. The priestess is asleep right now. Her wound isn’t bleeding anymore, but she’s lost a lot of blood and clearly on the edge of wakefulness the entire time. As she heads down to the shower and throws off her ruined robe and everything else, she can’t help but realize how lucky they were that the trap didn’t cut her deeper.

If Basil had lost a leg, she isn’t entirely sure that the fountain would go through the effort of restoring it… Actually, she isn’t even sure if the fountain would even bother to bring her friends’ back to life at all anymore, if they really do die. Just because it happened once doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again.

She turns on the water, standing there as it rains down over herself. Streams of red wash off of her body, off of her hands, off of her face and hair. Even after a few minutes of rubbing, she still seems to find more and more red spots and drips and even after washing her hair with soap twice, she’s still convinced that there’s red in it.

Fresh stares down at the drain, watching the red spiral down it.

As long as her friends are useful, is what the fountain said. As long as they’re useful, it will let them stay around. But what does that even mean?

Her hand reaches for the handle of the shower, as she has decided from some old instinct to turn it to cold. As cold as it can go. But as she stands there, holding the metal crank, she stops. Not because of a tenseness, born out of a fear of the shock of the icy water or because she is afraid of discomfort; that being exactly what she was hoping to achieve purposefully.

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The cold has always been the bad-thing’s way to reach her. Ever since her first life, ever since that night she had let it take her away from her old existence.

But she doesn’t do that anymore. She doesn’t want to do that anymore.

Fresh turns the nozzle the other way. Sure, the hot water might dry her skin and hair out a little more. But it’s comfortable. It’s warm. It gives her a sense of relief in her tense muscles and most importantly, it helps wash away every last drop of red.

She really does feel herself coming to strongly dislike the color. Maybe she shouldn’t. But it always seems to be following her, doesn’t it? Fresh can’t help but laugh at this odd thought as she turns off the water and stands there, letting herself drip for a moment.

Grabbing a big, fluffy towel, she rubs herself dry and takes the head of the shower, washing her robe as best as she can with it. But honestly, she thinks that the off-white fabric of the once-fluffy robe that her friends’ had gifted her in the west, might just be ruined for good. This isn’t going to wash out with just water.

Maybe she could make some of her purification-mixture again?

“Ghost-goo…” mutters Fresh under her breath. She can’t just throw away this item. This is a treasured thing. So she rinses it out as good as she can and then hangs it up, before cleaning out the shower as best as she can too and then, with everything having been done and her obligations to herself and her friends fulfilled, Fresh puts on her pajamas and goes upstairs, walking directly to her bed, which she changes into some clean sheets and then sits down in. She’s not allowed to leave it, after all.

Shamrock sets a bowl down next to her on her nightstands. “Eat. Sleep.”

“Thanks, Shamrock,” says Fresh, deciding that she’s going to do exactly that.

Jubilee comes back, dragging a familiar person in tow. The ‘milk-shake’ dark-elf.

“This one here,” says Jubilee, pointing at Basil’s bed. “Ignore the other one, she’s just mentally unwell.”

The dark-elf nods, pulling out a set of tools and oddities from his bag. Oddest of all is a set of wooden sewing needles. Fresh can’t really tell, but she thinks that they’re rare-wood. “I’ll take care of it,” says the man.

“Make it good and we’ll give you your fucking milkshakes for life,” says Jubilee.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” replies the dark-elf, lifting a pair of scissors and snipping with them.

“Fine, we’ll fucking pay you too,” replies Jubilee, rolling their eyes.

“You already had me at the milkshakes,” says the man, setting to work. Apparently, he’s some kind of druid from the south. Or, was, at least.

Fresh sighs in relief, before quietly eating the rest of her soup and laying down. She doesn’t make a single peep and just listens as the man works under Jubilee’s watchful eyes.

Razmatazz

Looks like everything is fine. I don't know if I trust it though. I think that snake of an author is planning something... If only there was somebody who knew for sure  x)

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