I'm extremely sorry I didn't post it sooner. Honest, I am. I have quite a few excuses as to why I didn't get this up sooner…and some of them may even be true! I'm also sorry about the large amount of parentheses in this as well. Sorry!

I still don't own SO3...sorry about that...not!

Chotto Ippuku

Chapter 2: Unholy Creations

The temple at Arias was dark. This was not an oddity, nor was the fact that it was also gloomy, run-down, and all sorts of crappy. Of course, the fact that it was lacking a certain priestess…well, that was a different story.

And the fact that it was lacking a certain priestess was enough to account for a lot of the doom-and-gloom feeling. (The rest could be blamed on the war.)

Then again, things were better for Milenya over in (insert city/town/village's name here). She had a job, money (which was actually Fayt's), and shelter.

So the skilled compounder/compoundress was able to work with what she wanted along others like her. And although things were dandy at first, they soon went sour.

The minor setback was when people kept calling her a witch. And they didn't just do this behind her back, oh no…they called her a witch to her face, top of her head, or anywhere below, depending on height.

For the first few weeks, Milenya bore this calmly, as she was trained to all those years ago. But as time went by, he anger boiled up…like witches' brew.

Then one day…she snapped. She walked all the way to her workshop, giggling insanely, and drawing a few extra stares.

As she mixed together gratuitous amounts of various (not to mention random) ingredients, she began forming a plan. She would create a poison and pass it off as candy! And then she would give it to people! And then she would make an antidote and give that to people! They'd think she was a hero! And they would never call her a witch again!

The people that didn't die would be forever grateful…she could make them her servants…

She would show them all…

And then she stopped in the middle of stirring this potion. She'd had a thought.

What would happen if the people didn't take the poison? Even worse, what if they didn't drink the antidote?

As she finished this thought, a reaction between conflicting ingredients caused a rather violent explosion.