"No... way…" Marcella said slowly, each word sounding like disbelief and awe. "I've only read about this. Never thought I'd actually see one in real life."

"They say it can Kill you and let your soul roam for five minutes before going to the afterlife. It has deep connection with hell too and is extremely poisonous."

"Funny enough anyone can touch it without having any effects but the moment even a piece of it rips open..."

'What's with the crazed reaction?' Jett was scared for his life. Did he wake up a sleeping dragon?

She turned her focus to Jett, eyes wide and sparkling, her expression softening into a pleading look. "Where did you find it? Tell me right now."

Jett's lips curved into a smirk. "That's a secret."

"No fair, just tell me where you found it. Please." She leaned closer, gaze sharp, as if she could peel away his thoughts just by staring.

Jett felt his chest tighten. It was like she was reading his soul, weighing every flicker of his expression. He looked away, uncomfortable under her piercing eyes.

She didn't back off. Instead, she took his hands gently, her voice turning sweet, almost angelic. "Please?"

'Like hell I'd give you access to something as dangerous as this.' Jett sighed, shaking his head. "Nope. Not today. I'm not giving your trigger-happy hands nuclear codes. Find them yourself."

He already knew she couldn't. Marcella had the worst luck with finding herbs. She only found what she needed for her current research, never what she wanted, it was a sharp counter to her drive for herbs.

At her home, she often sent the maids to gather ingredients, but that limited her options to what they were allowed to give her.

No one in their right minds would, give a child her that were labelled as dangerous to people. But that was exactly what she wanted.

"Its no fun if all I make are kids potions, where's the sense of adventure and discovery." She'd say that but all everyone else heard was a child trying to blow up the mansion.

'What's the point of this knowledge if it's not allowed to tred those dangerous waters?' A classic though for Marcella.

To get more dangerous materials, she had to rely on her friends. But even that was tricky.

A simple herb request that Evelina or Matthew would fetch without hesitation could get her scolded or reported if she asked the wrong person, like Elora or Morrigan for instance.

This had always been a problem for gamers who played as Marcella's character. Jett knew it well.

Players were forced to rely on others to gather herbs for her experiments. The developers made sure this particular production characters had a unique restriction when the players started trolling others with her potions.

Spamming random and dangerous potions that contributed nothing to that gameplay most of the time setting back playtime for others.

The only character that stood a chance was Freya's but nobody could use her property apart from Jett that is...

After hundreds of complaints, Marcella was restricted to only being able to gather herbs that she needed to progress the game, making other recipes forbidden unless in special situations.

So in the end the brought it upon themselves.

Jett had experienced this frustration firsthand. Every time he logged into her account, he ran into the same wall. Still, he refused to quit.

To him, it was just another puzzle. He spent hours testing combinations and probabilities until he found a method to bypass her constraints entirely. It took trial, failure, and luck manipulation items, but he cracked it.

Unlike his sister, who constantly shared her discoveries in the player forums, Jett kept his findings private. After a heated argument, he told her, "You can't show everyone your hand. They'll use it against you later."

Now, looking at Marcella's frustrated face, he smirked. Even here, in this world, her terrible foraging luck followed her.

With her obsessive personality, there was a high chance it would have just repeated itself with her turning into a bigger menace for Clarendon's Alchemy department more than she already was.

He tossed her a handful of Lyk herbs and stood up. "There's more where that came from, but this should be enough for a small batch, right?"

Marcella caught the herbs, eyes narrowing. The glare she gave him could have cut through steel.

Jett wasn't sure if it was bloodlust or the face of a spoiled child denied her favorite toy. Either way, he took a cautious step back.

'I need to get out of here before she actually tries to attack me,' Jett thought as he slowly backed toward the door.

"I just need to extract the poison and refine it into its gaseous form, right?" Marcella asked, still annoyed that Jett refused to tell her anything about the Lyk herb.

"Exactly. Glad you understand." Jett smiled in relief. 'At least her annoyance didn't cloud her focus. Thankfully, she's not as emotional as the others.'

He opened the door, ready to leave, when her voice stopped him again.

"You did tell him, didn't you? Cedric, I mean." Marcella's lips curved into a sly smile as she toyed with the herbs. "Is that really how you want to go about it? Your plan is good, especially if you manage to pull it off…"

"So you don't trust me either?" Jett sighed, his tone low. He couldn't blame her. Anyone would doubt a plan like his. Only Finn had believed, and that was because he had experienced it first hand and knew how it worked.

"It doesn't matter much to me," she said, her voice calm again. "Maybe it'll be more fun if you leave it as a surprise. Just make sure you handle the reveal properly."

'Coming from Marcella, that almost sounded… sane.' Jett shook his head and walked out, closing the door behind him.

*****

When he returned to Cedric's room, the smell of smoke and metal filled the air. Cedric was already hard at work, tools spread out around him as several bomb shells lay open on the table.

"You've already started, huh?" Jett said with a faint smile, arms folded as he leaned against the wall. He tried to sound casual, but his mind was elsewhere, back on what Finn and Marcella had said.

He didn't even notice Cedric studying him until the question hit.

"It's poison, isn't it?" Cedric's tone was steady, but his eyes were sharp.

*

*

*

Read him like a book

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