Nightshade: Hey, Red! What are you doing here?


Penny: This is my apartment complex. What are you doing here?
Nightshade: Oh, me? I was just visiting a friend who lives here. What a coincidence. So what've you been up to?


Penny: Spending lots of time with my hot new boyfriend. You know, the one who turned you down?


Nightshade: Boyfriend? Whatever you say Red. I'm fine with that, I got a boy minion of questionable sexual orientation.


Penny: What are you talking about?
Nightshade: He's gay! Can't you tell? I bet you haven't gotten further than first base with him have you? And you dressed like a streetwalker half the time.


Penny: No, but... he's just traditional.
Nightshade: Sure he is. Anyway Red, I have to go. See you around, with your 'boyfriend'.


Nightshade: Ciao! *snicker*

 

Elsewhere:

Ash: Now you keep that sling on for a week, all right? It's not broken, but you did strain your shoulder pretty badly.
Eric: He thought I was you! I was asleep!
Ash: I do keep a rifle under the mattress.


Eric: How do you deal with this? You just shut down for a third of the day, and anything can happen! There could be a disaster, someone could attack you, and you'd have no way of seeing it coming!


Ash: That right there? That's fear. And panic. You need to calm down. Most of the time the worst thing that happens is a bad dream.


Eric: And this pain thing! I can't move my arm without it getting all shooting-burning and uncomfortable.
Ash: Pain does that. You're just going to have to get used to it.

Eric: I dunno, this isn't as nice as I thought it would be.
Ash: It will get better. You just need to adjust. People don't get being human thrown at them all at once, that's why they start off as babies and grow into it.

 


Obsidian: Well aren't you a Mr. Frowney-face. And after I hear you had a nice night with Ash's pleasure-bot. It's all your fault, you know.
Magma: It was dark.


Obsidian: Not about that, silly. Ash. She was in love with you since she was three years old. But you never noticed her until she killed your dad.


Magma: She was four years younger than I was. That's a lot when you're a kid.


Obsidian: Sure, that's what you keep saying, but when she's 16 and you're 20 that's a big difference too. And it's not like that's when you realized she was so superior to the rest of us--she was an only child by the time she was ten. You were almost twice as old before you got rid of your siblings, and that was with her help. No, you just ignored her and went around chasing every cute empty-headed girl you could get under the skirt of, and then you notice her when she's got boobs and you pretend it's because she's so ruthless. Please.


Magma: It's not just because she has boobs. She's... perfect. It just took me a while to notice.


Obsidian: And when you do, you lay on that "marry me and have my genetically superior babies" crap. It's an insult. Like you still don't really care about her at all.


Magma: Hmm...

 


Penny: Chris!


Ravish: Babe! What's up, you sounded kind of weird on the phone.


Penny: Are those snakeskin leather pants?
Ravish: Sure are! I was spending time with my sister when I realized that life's just too short not to be fabulous! Anyway, what's up?


Penny: Um... nothing.


Commentary:
After Eric's incident involving mistaken identity, he's finding out that maybe Ash and Valentine were right about being human not quite being as easy as he thought it was. I was going to have Magma have a black eye in this fic, but my photoshop skills aren't up to par and I wasn't going to risk having to redo his entire face-up.

Speaking of Magma, we find out more about his interest in Ash. Yes, the family is supposed to be disturbing. So disturbing that Ash seems like an innocent in comparison to her cousins and prececessors. But she's still a product of that family, which explains a lot.

And finally, it should now be absolutely clear what Nightshade's plan to get Penny to dump Ravish is. Ravish should be coming across at least as gay as the infamous Billy Doll.