… Mal touched the side of their earless and smooth head, then their pointer fingers slowly went into their head, covering their fingernails.

…

… Marigold felt it would be impolite to scream in rage, instead her body chose to just grant her the hoarseness as if she had actually screamed for two hours, and she tried to put her disgust at this sight into words.

…

"Mal… this is inhuman."

"What did they do to you?" Dale whispered.

Mal turned, softly tapped at the edges of the scarred holes an inch or so behind their eyes, and watched the eyes staring in horror as they trailed along the scar marking the crown of their skull.

Ahem… Let's just do the big ones, shall we?

"An 'aesthetically pleasing modification' which caused the removal of some irrelevant flesh."

"This large scar here-" Mal noted while tracing a scar around the lower chest, " -is to avoid any wasted time eating."

…

"And this… is the largest operation."

Mal stood up, and turned around, revealing a gaping hole on their lower back by the tailbone that trailed up the spine with a small ladder of cuts.

… "Is that… meant for a tail?"

Dale asked, appalled, and a short laugh came from his mutilated child.

Marigold winced. "It's not funny, Mal."

Mal's laughing slowly increased intensity until they were bending over.

…

Then Mal stopped in a dead silence, watching them both.

"Nothing on you two."

"It's just that I- Heh- called someone a mangy tailless, shriveled old cat that needed to either get all nine lives offed fast, or-HA-just live a better life getting paralyzed waist down."

…

Despite starting to taste blood in their throat, they continued to deliver their words verbatim, preparing to start swallowing rapidly.

"-with a blunt butter knife to the tailbone."

…

Dale was horrified, and Marigold felt she wouldn't sleep for a week.

Mal tried to be serious once again. Spitting out now would be a bad idea.

….

Mal's face fell, and the mirth drained cleanly away.

"Oookay. I'm going to put a dampener on the pity party."

…

They waved their arms in an expansive waft.

"What now? You both now are aware of how messed up my body is. What are we going to do next?"

… Mal watched both of the adults in the room. Ignoring themselves, of course, but they didn't feel too "adult" right now. Having to reveal the inhuman aspects of your traumatising nightmare of a life can do that to a person.

Marigold began to speak first. "Mal, what is your gender?"

"As written, I do not qualify for those identifiers."

See previous point of Too long to explain.

"Mal, I would like this answered. Dale's been worried about your response."

…

Megan-Alexander Greenpath chose to watch the woodgrain instead.

…

"Megan?" Marigold asked.

She whistled a low fading note. Well, sure has been a long time since I heard that. Guess I should start talking, Alex?

"Are you a female being?"

"Technically," Mal muttered.

"… I was told that your reasoning behind your unusual behaviour is that you're on your period. Is that a correct statement?"

… #498 deemed that a worthy reason to stop overanalysing her situation and do what she liked: act snarky. She needed some snark right now.

"Doc? All this depends on how much messed up body horror you want. In for some tales that'll make you doubt the Hippocratic oath exists?"

… Marigold's eyes unintentionally shined in interest at Mal mentioning a completely unknown terminology. Was this hyper specific medical terminology? She was getting excited despite herself.

It wasn't that Marigold didn't enjoy research and writing, it's just that she had to do so much of it on just basic classes of injuries in recent years that she lost interest in it. This strange new term blasted her visions into a glorious moment of excitement for new horizons of medical knowledge.

"What is that? The term?"

… You people don't know the Hippocratic oath.

"Thou shalt not harm? -abstain from harming any man with your knowledge? Ring no bells at a-"

… Marigold's face fell. It was almost funny to watch her dream fall.

That's just… common sense. Why did they call it an oath?

Dale interrupted "-If you aren't a human?"

Mal looked with a condescending gaze.

"It still applies, doesn't it Dale? Next?"

…

His child was tortured for being a Faunus.

Dale was wondering how he wasn't shaking himself into pieces with his anger.

No.

No.

Just… no.

Mal. You don't just get to say "Next" and drop this.

"Mal. I need everything on these people you remember."

… "I have nothing useful, Dale. Besides that, we already definitely did a number in them before I got away."

Mal grinned maliciously as they said this, so Dale was pretty sure that he was remembering something horrible.

He relaxed slightly, but just enough to not let his anger out with his next words.

"What did you do?" asked both of them in unison to Mal.

Marigold had asked as well as Dale, her eyes noting the change in Mal with interest.

Dale asked trying to see if Mal meant his past or present, and if it was the recent present, who it was he had to go kill.

"You both know automatic doors that lift up like…"

Mal lifted their hands up slowly, making a childish "VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMM?"

…

"No?"

… "Shipwrecks. Here's how the door's relevant."

Mal stood up, searching around for something…

"Anyone have a spare fruit or something?"

Dale responded, "Mari probably has some oranges."

… A weird question, but Marigold may have had a fruit bowl somewhere up in her kitchen.

She walked up her well maintained stairs, quickly finding an orange in her bowl, which she noted was a bit soft from being old.

…

"Mal. What are you trying to do?"

… "Dale, I'm obviously trying to show you how I killed him."

"Who?"

…

Mal turned and stared like Dale had just asked something completely random.

"The inhuman man that destroyed my life, obviously."

…

...

Dale started to worry for Marigold's sake. Marigold herself came down with an orange, tossing it to Mal, and waiting for the explanation to be over so they could return to the actually important questions they were avoiding.

Mal gestured to their hand, held a few oranges higher than a normal orange, than a shoe they were kicking off.

"This, This hand here? It's a door.

…

"This orange is the man who did this to me.

He gestured at the orange, before frowning and asking for someone with a pen to lend one.

When asked why, they quipped "I'm drawing a little face on him."

Dale chuckled despite the situation, then petered out. How am I supposed to be responding here?

Mal waved their hand in an arcing gesture, "No, it's fine. It is a bit funny.

…

They took a break from sitting there drawing, and looked up, asking to their audience, "You both know what deer are?"

Mal had to wait at their… very unusual response of laughter. … Was the tension too much?

They spent some extra time waiting for Marigold and Dale to get back out of their state of hilarity by meticulously peeling off areas of the orange peel. It wasn't enough of an incise to fully peel it, just enough to reveal a layer of white. It was soothing, so it went slower than they initially expected.

Marigold became calm first, and asked to see the orange.

Then we can get back to getting questions answered.

She was deftly thrown the engraved orange, noting the antlered face carved on the peel. Black eyed, roughly textured from the cutting-

"-and you did this with a pen. That's very clever."

"Thanks, Marigold."

With a quiet "ptop" the orange was caught by Dale, and he analysed it before throwing it back with a question.

"What do you call this mask?"

Mal was quietly surprised. How did he guess so rapidly? went through their head before giving a reply:

"White Deer."

The two older adults glanced towards each other. That sounded… too similar for any comfort.

Dale asked what he'd been thinking the last few minutes.

"How many did you kill?"

…"One supervisor, the two surgeons, the deer-masked man, 212-"

Marigold choked softly, "Megan. You killed 216 people?"

Mal sighed in exasperation. "#212 had flight. I broke her legs, and she couldn't last after that-"

… Marigold was looking blank, so Mal remembered she wasn't here the entire day.

Dale had a look of discomfort at the blunt explanation of crippling a girl.

"-Everyone with an ability had a number. I killed around a hundred of us personally."

Dale muttered "Out of 500."

Mal grinned with a look of pride. "You're getting it! I killed #500."

… The quiet that ensued gave an impression that Mal seemed to expect a response of congratulations or something.

"Dale, Marigold. Five hundred was the man. He's the orange."

With that said, Mal threw the orange to the floor, fluidly dropping down to crush it with their hand, the impact resounding with a crack.

Mal turned to watch them both with a tight smile of relief, the secrets revealed without any horrible issue-

I was right, Alex. Always was.

-then the face broke to show a glowing grin of radiant ecstasy.

"I loved that part."

The exclamation fell into the abyssal silence, and Mal decided she should return back to the main path of the conversation.

...