[Mad Hatter's Lab]

Geeze, Ilphy! Roxanne's complexion can't get much redder than that! She's blushing up a standard monsoon so swept away is she in Ilphy's sassy quips and chic dress! If her cheeks turned a shade ruddier it'd mean her capillaries were bursting and she'd need to be carted off to the hospital pronto! Why, if she were not raised with as much discipline as she was, she'd start slipping tasteful flirtation into her speech-patterns!

Roxanne begins to titter heartily as she swings the door shut behind Ilphy after she's entered. They'll, with any luck, emerge into a spick-and-span, white hallway lined with twenty or so regularly-spaced doors.

"That's not forbidden here? Even though you're a higher rank than, erm, you're my boss? Perhaps dinner and a movie are in order, then? Y'know. If you have time. I understand that you're a very busy woman, and I won't be dismayed too much if you refuse..."

Just as Roxanne finishes speaking, a mechanized female voice announces,

"The Hatteress and guest entering VR chambers."

over an intercom wired into the walls.

As sudden as that voice echoed throughout the hallways, reverberating against the white metal panels on the walls, a brilliant white light suddenly dissolves the entire hallway, seemingly stranding Roxanne and Ilphy on an endless expanse of verdant grassland, a fruit-bearing apple tree, limbs hanging low, straining to support their load of sweet, sweet and further perfect apples, laid out upon a slightly elevated hill under a starry night sky.

"Control transferred to The Hatteress. Oh, and good evening, ma'am."

-------
[Main Room]

Dang! Whatever this defect is, it is possessing Her friend's body. Nobody messes with Her pack! Nobody! This magical abberation must go!

...

Maybe. Is it hurting Zefir? Clarissa cannot tell. Maybe a treaty can be struck between these two entities that have inherited the same body? Perhaps a mutual symbiosis will develop! Maybe Zefir has split personalities, and extracting this delinquent thing from him would sever his soul in two.

She'll give it a chance. One chance. She hopes this thing doesn't blow it...for its sake.

Clarissa's tails retreat to her backside, swaying with a most pacifying, non-aggressive wave as though to the beat of an invisible metronome, every twitch coordinated for effect.

"What are you, if you don't mind me asking? And what have you done to my buddy? If you've hurt him or brainwashed him in any way, so help me Chaos, I'll drag you to Ilphy's office by the scruff of your neck and exorcise you on the spot!"

Well, Clarissa isn't being nice or patient at all in her dealings with this...creature!