Glk! Hurp! Ooooorrrgff! Eh? Eep!

The following has been a small but representative sample of the responses of Dulcinea d'Avingon to being the center of attention. In the event of a real emergency, you would have heard a high pitched shriek, followed by an explanation and detailed directions to the nearest emergency shelter, hospital tent, or Anti-Giant-Snake Zone. Thank you for your continued patience and cooperation!

So yeah, this is bad. Not, like, Jetpack Dinosaur bad, but still pretty aggressively not good. It turns out that metaphorical spotlights don't do self styled heroines who prefer to work from the shadows any more favors than do literal ones. It's why anybody with half a brain works out a system of what the acceptable ordering options are before they even go there if there is even the slightest chance they might wind up there again, because you never want to be the person the staff recognize on sight. You don't want to be the one they tell stories about because you took ages figuring this out in person, and you [i]absolutely[/i] do not want to be that girl who only ever orders the one thing because you will walk in one day and a pretty waitress will smile at you and say, "The usual?" as she hands you a platter of chicken strips, and just... eeeuuuueh. Shiver. Gah. No. NO.

"What? Sure. Yes. No? Don't make this weird." says Dulcinea seconds before draining her entire iced melted ice cream in an awkwardly long shot. 

And that's when everything goes [i]really[/i] south, because there's a Rinley staring right at her. She winces. Audibly. 

See, Rinley is... not a friend. We don't get to have friends, right Dulcey? So no, that is not what Rinley is. Rinley is a... Valued Research Assistant. Which is to say she occasionally provides very illuminating data when she [i]walks right into an experiment and breaks all of the fragile and expensive equipment.[/i] She is a curse that you can summon by saying, "Gosh, this is delicate work!" or any number or more Normal People phrases that imply it. She is the kind of girl that will invite herself along to your late night bar crawl, tell you she isn't hungry, and then eat all of your fries while you're going over your notes. She cheats at Go. Probably? I mean, she has to be. She [i]definitely[/i] cheats at Mario Kart. Who intentionally drops to 7th place just to pick up a gold mushroom? Who even does that???

Also not that anybody asked, but Rinley is unfairly, dangerously, [i]lethally[/i] cute. That's how she gets away with all the other stuff, and why she has to be kept [s]on a very tight leash[/s] a safe distance away whenever possible. Otherwise, weird little daydreams start creeping into field research where suddenly she's parked her silly foxy head on your lap and looking straight up with begging eyes and a fully blepped tongue and it's just like? Rinley??? Stop that. That's not what people's imaginations are for, Rinley. 

"Right. Well. I see my ride, so I'm just gonna... yup! As you were, people. Toodles!"

And then she's off and it doesn't matter if she's going Too Fast or not because frankly regional properties are a dubious science [i]at best[/i] and also because it means she's leaving her Most Important Problem right now before it can hurt her. Always dance with the devil you know, right? That's how she's wound up with her arm around Rinley's shoulders all conspiratorial-like (the sleeve is [i]very[/i] damp, she's so sorry), spinning her right back around and leading her away from the cafe, deeper into the streets, and down an alley. 

"Just the person I was looking for! Tell me, my dear, uh..." she snaps and (badly) pretends to fumble for the name, "...girl! When would [i]you[/i] say you noticed that the sun was broken? And what are you prepared to do to fix it?"