SchNGrBTwM

[2] Eat the fruit. You're a vampire, what's a little poison going to do to you? Negotiations will go more smoothly if you send the message she can't intimidate you.

[4]
You give the mermaid your best confident glare, and shove the entire fruit in your mouth. More offputting than the actual immediate flavour is the response from your unliving digestive systems, which have a habit of projectile-rejecting anything that isn't liquid.

One of the few downsides of vampirism, if you had to count 'em- oh no wait ok you spoke too soon, you just bit down on this thing and good gods this is awful. Princess Pepperstrelle watches you attempt to chew an egg-sized flavour explosion with awe.

"Yeh coulda jes' said you're immune teh poisons. I could use that, y'know."

"Gnuhm-"

"Ew! Don' say it now, you're with royalty! Mind yer damn manners."

At least half of the fruit's mass is fine, sticky seeds, with a resinous coat that sticks to your teeth and makes your gums and tongue itch something fierce. You spit out however many of those you can, and the mer nods in approval at your pinpoint seed-spitting accuracy. Mouth sufficiently vacated, you fake a swallow and gesture like "now what."

"Y'done?" You nod. She opens her own mouth wide and sticks out her bright green tongue, flashing the underside. "Gruhwhy?"

You nod, a little more stubbornly. Pepperstrelle barks a short laugh, and leaps from her perch. "Awrigh'! Yeh'r offishly my Gross Grey Knight and resident poison-tester. Yeh're weird, like, I can't tell if yeh'r a seakin into leggery or one of the new gods' uglier critters, but I think we can work with that."

She hoists up her many, many layers of skirt, throws a few trains of fabric over a shoulder, and marches off down the boardwalk. You take her turned back as an opportunity to spit out the rest of the fruit, though the sensation of bugs crawling in your mouth persists.

"What's yer name, by the bye? 'zit as grotty as your face is?"

[/4]

>"Evangeline Morelock-Lanceblood."
> "Princess Pepperstrelle."
> Literally any other suggestion of Chwoka's
> "What was that about new gods?"