Seeing Talulah charging directly toward her, Jeanne wore an air of supreme confidence. The very idea of a mere Draco trying to physically overpower her was laughable—who gave this woman such misplaced courage?
Jeanne knew the stark combat disparity between them inside and out. It would take all of ten seconds for her to force Talulah into submission and demand an apology, leaving her opponent with zero room to resist.
...Wait?
Just as she prepared to make her move, she suddenly realized she had been pinned down by an invisible angle of leverage. If she didn't exert serious force, breaking free was impossible; but applying raw strength might accidentally injure the person standing directly behind her.
Jeanne turned her head back to look at Alina—the person currently locking down both of her arms with an unyielding grip. The gentle Elafia wore a thoroughly mischievous grin, making her allegiance to Talulah's cause crystal clear.
That universally comforting, angelic face now sent a distinct shiver down Jeanne's spine. She had actually been neutralized by Alina of all people.
"Alina, what on earth are you doing?!" Jeanne defaulted to using a tone of innocent bewilderment, hoping to shame her captor into a guilty release.
"I decided this arrangement was thoroughly optimal, so I opted for it," Alina replied smoothly, maintaining her smile without loosening her grip by a single millimeter.
"You'd better be prepared to use some real effort here!" Jeanne glared toward the approaching Talulah, frantically thrashing while tossing out empty threats in a desperate bid for freedom.
"Relax, I trust you completely not to hurt me."
Don't weaponize my own trust against me like this!
Watching Talulah close the distance step by step, Jeanne adopted an expression of fatalistic resignation. She genuinely hadn't anticipated that Alina—her loyal pillar of support—would sell her out so callously.
Even so, this didn't mean Talulah had won the war. The moment she managed to turn the tables, she was going to return today's humiliation with heavy interest!
With that fierce resolution, Jeanne shot a look of haughty provocation toward her attacker. That defiant glare only seemed to make Talulah even more... thoroughly amused. A wicked little smirk playing across her lips, the Draco closed in with deliberate slowness.
As those malicious hands reached toward her, a few cold beads of sweat slipped down Jeanne's forehead. She could vividly picture the grim fate awaiting her.
Back during their time in Victoria, this woman hadn't managed to win a single round of sparring against her. Now, reduced to a helpless, defenseless maiden at the mercy of her tormentors, what kind of cruel and unusual treatment was she about to endure?
Was she, a pristine Saintess, truly going to fall prey to these two villains today? She watched despairingly as those hands closed in, entirely powerless to mount a defense.
"Don't come any closer... stop touching there... don't tickle, I—hahaha, stop it!"
Unable to withstand the merciless assault on her physical weak points, Jeanne finally broke, dissolving into helpless giggles. She remained trapped and thoroughly tormented for a full twenty minutes before her captors finally decided to grant her a reprieve.
Once her feet touched the floor again, Jeanne curled over, clutching her stomach and rubbing her slightly aching ribs. She slumped facedown across the desk like a deflated corpse while fixing the two culprits with a venomous, unblinking glare. Her cheeks were puffed out in furious grievance.
Though she tried her absolute best to look terrifying, that expression fell entirely short of menacing. Instead, it possessed a bizarre, irresistible sort of charm the kind that made people want to—
"Alright, alright, stop sulking. Back when you used to pull those exact stunts on me, I never sat around glaring in silence like a statue afterward."
Under Alina's silent prompting, Talulah ambled over to the desk. The wisest course of action right now was clearly coaxing the saintess back out of her defensive shell.
Otherwise, if she kept brooding, even two people with exceptionally thick skin wouldn't be able to endure that pathetic, resentful stare for long. More importantly, they worried that if left unchecked, Jeanne might maintain this exact haunted glare all the way until midnight.
Imagine a gloomy, vengeful Jeanne crouching silently right beside your bedside in the pitch of night, waiting entirely to whisper a spooky sound just to watch you jump.
It wasn't that Talulah was overthinking things; knowing Jeanne's notoriously petty nature, the odds of her actually executing that prank were easily over one thousand percent.
"I am not sulking! My petty grievances aren't nearly that small!" Jeanne snapped back with all the maturity of a disgruntled toddler, before snatching up a stale, rock-hard piece of Gallic bread and aggressively sinking her teeth into it, entirely unbothered by its industrial-grade density.
"Yes, yes, your heart is vast—larger than the city gates." Talulah chuckled, patting Jeanne's soft hair before trading a helpless, knowing smile with Alina.
How was one even supposed to categorize this person? At times, Jeanne possessed a depth of maturity that put the veteran Patriot to shame; yet under certain trivial conditions, she would revert entirely to a childish, petulant adolescent.
Witnessing these rare outbursts never failed to amuse them, while also sparking a quiet realization: why hadn't they noticed just how unbearably cute she could be?
Right now, Alina's terminal was practically bursting with candid photos of a fuming Jeanne. They had already quietly agreed that if they ever ran low on funds, they could easily sell signed prints of these expressions to the Sankta—the market would practically riot for them.
Talulah cast a brief, mischievously calculating glance down at the nineteen-plus-however-many-months-old maiden, sending a distinct shiver of foreboding straight down Jeanne's spine.
"Quick... what black magic did you use to brainwash Alina into helping you ambush me?" Desperate to steer the conversation away from whatever dangerous schemes were brewing in that head, Jeanne hastily threw out a diversion.
Her divine Revelation whispered that if she let Talulah continue down that train of thought, she was going to lose something of immense personal value—though what that exact loss might be remained frustratingly vague.
"Nothing special. It was just a mutual understanding between the two of us, supplemented by a tiny bit of assistance from little Fafnir." Talulah offered a smug, victorious grin, temporarily shelving her wicked plotting for a safer moment.
She would simply have to wait for the right opening to extract Jeanne's compliance. Patience was a virtue, after all.
"Talulah spent the entire morning venting about how unfairly you bullied her in Victoria, insisting that if she didn't get immediate vengeance, she wouldn't be able to sleep for a month. So, she basically forced me into a temporary alliance," Alina explained with a soft, slightly sheepish smile.
"You'd have gotten better mileage out of admitting you just wanted to watch me get manhandled."
"If you choose to interpret it that way... I suppose I won't object."
Observing Alina's blushing cheeks and the way the Elafia instinctively looked away to dodge her gaze, Jeanne felt entirely confident she had pegged the real motivation.
She knew it!
Jeanne renewed her intense, deadpan stare at Alina, locking onto the deer-eared girl until the latter finally squirmed under the pressure and surrendered.
History proved that Alina's psychological fortitude was several tiers below Talulah's—she simply lacked the thick-skinned resilience to withstand Jeanne's professional-grade glaring contest.
"Alright, fine. Next time you want to bully Talulah, I'll help you hold her down instead, okay?" Alina deployed her ultimate, highly practiced weapon: soothing a frustrated Jeanne with the tone of an indulgent mother comforting a toddler. Naturally, a mere verbal concession wasn't going to buy her complete absolution.
She'll probably just help Talulah double-team me the moment I let my guard down, Jeanne muttered darkly to herself.
"Instead of that, consider this debt formally logged. I'll cash in the favor whenever inspiration strikes."
Jeanne had originally intended to force Alina into a joint operation tonight, treating Talulah to an unforgettable psychological terror experience. But now that a far more entertaining avenue had opened up, she decided to table the revenge for a rainy day.
Given Alina's rigid personal code of honor, a verbal contract of this nature was ironclad. She wasn't like Talulah, who would brazenly default on her debts without a second thought.
"Very well. Just make sure your eventual demand isn't something entirely unreasonable—even I have limits to what I can accept, you know."
Despite her defensive phrasing, Alina hardly looked like the type to hold a genuine grudge, especially given her utter lack of intimidating energy.
"Verdant Sparks? What sort of establishment is this?"
While Jeanne and Alina whispered back and forth, Talulah's attention had been snagged by a stray advertising pamphlet left lying on the desk by the Elafia. Intending to toss it into the recycling bin, the Draco had paused upon spotting a block of unfamiliar Victorian lettering.
The flyer advertised a boutique workshop operating under the poetic title "Verdant Sparks," located squarely within the inner residential sectors of modern-day Victorian Tara.