I remember when family dinners involved guns and flamethrowers

Paschalis de Santis (with Michelle Taylor Ashworth)

He took a moment. Really, for the sake of manners, Paschalis should have been vaguely complimentary but of course, he doubted that anybody in this room truly expected that of him. Still, it would be a cold day in Hell when he let the Ashworths make him deviate so much from his core personality.

"The quality," Paschalis said, so blandly that it could not possibly be apparent that he was gnashing teeth, "is rather decent and therefore acceptable. You should consider taking up the culinary arts more thoroughly." And thereby enslave himself to the kitchen, to the point where even Micheal Tyler Ashworth would not have time to make trouble anywhere else.

He took his eyes off of Michelle, finally. Doing so was a slow but smooth action that suggested he was dismissing her rather than flat out ignoring. Paschalis did wonder what was going on through the mind of her twin, however. As much as he would like to think that there was a perfectly good explanation for why Michael was being unnaturally pleased -maybe he slipped some nightshade into the lemonade or mixed hemlock with the salad leaves- Paschalis knew that it was simply because Michael was an idiot. Merits and validations aside, he was an idiot.

Sometimes he really did feel like it would have been easier to deal with the twins if they really had been trying to kill him. That would have been more routine.

Michelle Taylor Ashworth (with Paschalis de Santis)

"I am paid to make young children cry," Paschalis supplied helpfully in an even tone, one that Michelle could not even pin down as the type which made her hand jerk with the temptation of slapping him full across the face. All of his tones did that for her, after all. "Sometimes I am even allowed to cut people open," he added, sounding dead serious. Maybe that was it, then, just the dumb, dead look on his face.

"Congratulations on finding an outlet for your sociopathy," she retorted. "It suits you perfectly, I am sure." How did this man even get a job around children anyways? Was the academy that hard pressed for staff? She completely rejected the train of reasoning that told her it was not at all different from her usual dinners with Michael. Anything work related inevitably continued down the vein of "I stuffed my hands into this person's chest and mugged them for their inefficiently functioning organs."

There was another round of quiet glaring from both ends of the table before Michael broke the silent battle to the death. Being the wise young man he was, he had chosen the one topic that everybody at the table could agree on full-heartedly. It hardly meant that they would actually be getting along but it made things more bearable. Because once again, Paschalis was the lesser of two evils and Michelle had to remind herself of that fact every once in a while.

"Everything," Paschalis was saying in response to Michael's question. His answer was immediate but somewhat absent, like the subject was being run on track. "There are over two hundred of us. One of the branches just declared holy war on a different one. Nothing new to speak of, in other words. And Helen Laughingwood accidentally killed one of my distant cousins at a luncheon once." The last part seemed like an afterthought.