“Oh no,” Elodie says, in sudden dread, looking at the panicked, bloody-katana-wielding ninja. “This is just like that story about the frog and the scorpion.”

Sudden realization strikes her. “And Scorpion is a ninja, how could I not have seen this coming??”

Okay, there’s no need to panic. (Bloody katana.) There is mild need to panic.

“Okay, Miss Scorpion,” Elodie says, taking the sort of tone one might with a horse ghost you’re trying to coax into following you to a place with lots of sugar cubes forever, “I need you to please put the sword away. It is not a valid tool for beach volleyball, and we have to play beach volleyball. Otherwise, like, what’s to stop Leelee from cursing you into a real scorpion?”

[I am afraid of this turning into the parable of the frog and the scorpion, which ends with both of them drowning. Keeping My Cool with a 7; tell me how trying to calm Carmen down will leave me vulnerable.]