"Well, I try being nice to everybody, all near-arguments aside, of course,” replied Cole following Kryschenn’s comment. He was never the type to really take a compliment to heart. Reflecting on his earlier interactions with Kryschenn, a little exception to her appraisal of his character came to mind. “Then again, psi-blasting people doesn’t really fall into the ‘nice’ category, does it? You know, I should have come up with another way to stop your ‘Berserker’ persona without knocking you unconscious,” he said apologetically to her. “A fall like the one you took afterward probably didn’t help whatever internal injuries you were suffering from at the time. Perhaps restraining you with your own cape till you calmed down, or something like that would have worked better.”"Hey, you did what you had to, and I'm okay now, so don't worry about it," Kryschenn replied with a smile. Quite frankly, she still didn't remember a thing about this or any other berserk episode, so he could have psi-blasted her or bashed her over the head with a sledge hammer or shot her with an elephant tranquilizer, whatever it took to stop her, and she wouldn't be able to tell the difference. All that mattered was that she hadn't actually hurt any of her friends during her blackout.
The dark subject of her out-of-control rage made her shudder, so she quickly took it in a more light-hearted direction. "But I don't know if restraining me with my cape would have been quite the way to get me to calm down." With a grin, she grabbed the corners of her short cape and flipped it up over her head. "I got her!!" she demonstrated, wrapping her arms around herself and then pretending to struggle melodramatically. Had she turned her back to Cole in the process, the action would have revealed a short, broken piece of a stick tucked in the back of her belt, which had been hidden by her cape and mostly forgotten in the excitement since its discovery.
As she stopped "struggling," one eye peeked out a gap in the tartan fabric wound around her head, and she snickered at her own absurdity. "See? It doesn't seem as effective. I think psi-blasting me was the safest bet." While she spoke, she untangled herself from her cape and smoothed her hair approximately back into place. "Although, now that I know what I'm really capable of," she added with a touch of grimness that she tried to mask, "maybe I can control it better and you won't have to worry about stopping me again." She sighed, looking off into the distance. This was not a subject that particularly pleased her to think about, and she still hadn't worked through all the ramifications of it yet. But at the very least, now she knew about it. "And, if I didn't say it before, thanks for being honest enough to tell me about what I did. Even if I did freak out when I found out, I'm glad that someone finally told me."
And if you were honest enough to tell me about my berserking, why won't you tell me what's wrong with your hand?
Knowing better than to bring that question up again, Kryschenn gestured in the direction they had been heading before the argument had nearly broken out. "Shall we go on?"
