Well, it was, admittingly, vaguely written.
This book will be over twenty chapters. Maybe just by one, maybe not.
New chapter.
CHAPTER TWENTY:
Pride Problems
"Strongest one?" Gaz said, at once. "Pride?"
"The hardest Evil to beat," Pandora said, in a more solemn manner than the RAFians had seen from her. "Pride tends to be a very selfish thing, whereas an act of selflessness would have been able to weaken the others, not so with pride."
"Any reason that you waited to say this until now?" Saffa asked pointedly, before turning to GH and saying, "oh, enough grumbling about your guitar, GH! The kid didn't even touch it."
"There are finger marks!!"
"Those are yours," falc0 said, with his piercing eyesight able to see every loop and swirl of the fingerprints from this angle.
"No, they aren't!" GH protested.
"To think," Saffa retorted, in faux harsh way, "that I thought you were being
mature about the whole thing."
GH glowered at Saffa, who shrugged it off. She was about to gloatingly mention who won when they battled right after the gladiator episode, but Cloak irritably interceded.
"Can we
focus?!" Cloak said. The little outburst cause the very ground to tremble, asif there were merely an oncoming stampede of gnu, or wildebeests. It stopped abruptly when Cloak managed to regain his composure. "Going back to Saffa's original question, why are just now informing us of this tidbit of knowledge? This would have been useful five or six Evils ago."
"The way we're going about this is working," Pandora said, rather simply. "I didn't see any reason to bring it up, as such. Besides, the fact that they were returned to the Box after I . . . after I made the . . . the Mistake . . . should have already told you that there was another way to break the adherence."
"You've done this before." Dino said, summing up.
"Isn't that obvious?" Pandora said, quietly, showing a more vulnerable side to herself, one the RAFians hadn't seen before now.
Cloak easily recognized now that the haughty and arrogant posturing . . . it was a cover for an underlying insecurity, an underlying guilt. She couldn't help her addictive curiosity, it was just a facet of herself that she had to learn to live with. She felt guilty at allowing the Box to escape her possession, she felt self-anger at allowing it to come to pass and at allowing it to be open a second time. And more conflicting emotions enoug to make one wonder why she wasn't exploding.
Cloak was feeling some guilt himself. He had been essentially bullying her, to get her to do as they pleased. As a victim of bullying of himself, it shamed him with that knowledge he was a victimizer as well.
"We need to find Suburbia," Saffa said.
"Superbia," Demos and Pandora corrected.
"Whatever," Saffa said.
"I don't think it would be too hard to find," Dino said, thoughtfully. "I don't believe Pride hides all that well. I mean it is defined as the quality or state of being proud, right? Inordinate amount self-esteem. An unreasonable conceit of one's own superiority in talents, beauty, wealth, rank, or whatever, which manifests itself in lofty airs, distance, reserve and contempt of others often, am I right?"
"Still we can't really expect to see it, adhered to a host or not, consumed host or not, simply strutting down the --" Gaz said, before being interrupted.
"There," falc0 said at once.
"How devilishly convenient," Demos commented benignly.
Betty Mitchell was already "consumed" by Superbia, and managed to strut down the street. Yet it didn't look as jerky and awkward as its six fellows. The movements looked far more natural, more unnoticeable that something was not right there. Pride, after all.
Superbia had her chest puffed out proudly. And it saw the RAFians. Unlike the others, Pride was confident (perhaps overconfident) that it could handle them. It was, after all, the strongest of all of the Evils.
"Go ahead," it said, with Bette's voice and mouth. Now this was just like its fellows. There was no lip articulation. It was just like that of the simplest animatronic, like a mere Muppet. "Go ahead and try to suck me into that Box. You can't do it."
"
Expellocorpus," Cloak said.
This time was different. Pride was only forced to "unconsume" Bette, but was still adhered to her. She was quickly "consumed" again. The RAFians were stunned, while Pandora looked downcast.
