That night, inside the Azazel residence, a wretched voice wailed through the room. Fortunately, the soundproofing was excellent, so it didn't disturb the other lodgers.
"Help! Murder! Dragon-slaying! Someone is abusing a rare species! Is no one going to do anything?! Lemuen, why are you just standing there watching? Get this girl off me!"
Talulah was pinned to the bed, struggling frantically. Jeanne sat with her back to her, straddling Talulah's waist and gripping that incessantly twitching tail, a terrifying object held in her hand.
"Why don't you just endure it? Do you really think at this point Jeanne would just let you go as if nothing happened? Instead of resisting here, you're better off just accepting it..."
Lemuen, sitting nearby and enjoying the show, watched the scene with great excitement. She eyed the tail as it flailed about, trying to escape Jeanne's grasp, then looked at whatever Jeanne was pulling out of a bag.
"Stop it, Jeanne! Is our friendship not worth even one mistake? You didn't laugh at the time, either! How about you just mess with me a few times and we call it even?"
Talulah stared at the bottle in Jeanne's hand. She wanted to fight back, but she was completely suppressed by Jeanne, whose physical strength far exceeded her own. She had truly forgotten that the place she had poked was Jeanne's weak point, and she could only imagine how hard Jeanne had struggled to keep from laughing back then—but that didn't justify this kind of retaliation!
"I beg you, please just turn back to your white form! I don't even care if I'm exposed anymore, just go back to being the gentle and kind Jeanne you used to be..."
Looking at the "Black Jeanne" on top of her, Talulah prayed for a miracle to turn this "ancestor" back into the Jeanne of her heart. Otherwise, her dignity for the rest of her life was going to be ruined...
Talulah had long ago figured out the differences between Jeanne's two forms. Simply put, the Jeanne in her black form was much bolder than her white-form self. In this state, if a thought popped into Jeanne's head, she would put it into practice immediately. And Talulah was the most frequent victim of Black Jeanne's whims...
"Be a good girl, Talulah. Don't move around and mess up my work. Relax, relax... it'll only take a moment. It's not like you've ever tried this before, right?"
As soon as Jeanne finished speaking, Talulah felt her tail go stiff. She could only lie obediently on the bed, quietly clawing at the sheets, her eyes filled with "affectionate" looks directed at Lemuen. She had discovered long ago that Black Jeanne had this peculiar ability, but she hadn't expected that even against her will, she would find herself "consenting" to let Jeanne have her way with her.
Aaaah, there's no way to resist Jeanne's words! Alina, what are you doing right now? Come save me! Otherwise, I'm going to be ravaged by Jeanne...
Unfortunately, Alina was far away on the snowfields and had no way to blink-travel to Chernobog, meaning she had no way to rescue Talulah from the foreseeable future. Luckily, Lyudmila was still roaming the city and hadn't returned; otherwise, Talulah, the leader, would have performed a true "destruction of dignity" act right in front of her subordinate.
"It's too late for talk, Talulah. Prepare to say goodbye to your tail as you know it. I'm starting!"
"Yamero (Stop), Jeanne! No good will come of this! What you're doing is against our organizational philosophy!"
But Jeanne no longer hesitated. She took out her prepared little bottle, picked up the brush inside, and began evenly applying it to the tip of Talulah's tail, carefully brushing over every single scale.
Feeling the brush wiggling against the tip of her tail, Talulah lay there as if her soul had left her body. The sensation at the tip of her tail told her that Jeanne had finally made her move.
"It's just applying nail polish; do you really need to be this dramatic? Worst case, you buy a skirt to cover it for a few days, and once Jeanne goes to Lungmen, you can find a way to wash it off, right?"
Lemuen watched the two of them toss and turn with a sense of wordless exasperation. It was just coloring a tail, yet they were making a fuss as if Jeanne were attempting an abduction; they had managed to carry on like this until now.
When Jeanne had first come back with a whole bag of nail polish, Talulah had reacted like a cat with its fur standing on end, seemingly guessing exactly what Jeanne intended to do. However, Jeanne hadn't started her plan immediately upon returning. She knew that after such intense mental exertion, Talulah would definitely try to get some sleep early to recover her nearly overworked brain cells.
But Jeanne hadn't expected Talulah to fake being asleep! Talulah had suddenly woken up when Jeanne started her move, intending to scare her off... and then the car overturned. She was pinned by the waist and subjected to "forced construction."
Talulah ignored Lemuen's advice, simply wailing as she felt the brush stroke across her scales—a sensation like a brush passing over dead skin. Fortunately, there were no other strange feelings; Talulah's tail was covered in hard scales, and scales don't feel much.
But the sight was still something Talulah couldn't accept. Meanwhile, Jeanne was humming a song while applying different colors of nail polish, looking for all the world like she was creating a masterpiece.
It seemed that having achieved her dream today, Jeanne was in an excellent mood. The ahoge on her head had evolved into a sunflower, twisting and turning incessantly. Jeanne kept switching nail polishes, turning the originally monotone tail into a multicolored one, complete with a hand-drawn "chibi" version of her own face.
"Come, take a look at this tail reborn by my hand! Doesn't even a single glance give people a 'bright' feeling? I have quite the artistic cell after all..."
Jeanne held up Talulah's tail to show off her handiwork. What entered the eyes of Talulah and Lemuen was a tail that had turned into a rainbow, covered in doodles that looked like a child's stick-figure drawings.
"It's beautiful, truly beautiful. I didn't expect Lady Jeanne to have such artistic talent. If this tail were put on exhibition, it would probably become the favorite piece of art for the Sankta... Miss Talulah, do you have any plans to sell your tail lately?"
Looking at the creative, abstract graffiti, Lemuen could only respond with praise. She certainly didn't want Jeanne to draw a ring of such patterns around the "fluorescent tube" above her own head—that would be a true, large-scale social death.
"I wouldn't sell my tail to you even if I were a tail's worth of debt! I am a dragon with dignity!"
Talulah looked at her tail with heartbreak. Today they had basically won Chernobog and started cooperation with Ursus on the Infected issue—two great things happening on the same day. Why did this have to happen?
"But if you can help me drag this high-on-adrenaline girl away, I might consider letting you look at it for two more days."
Talulah looked at Jeanne, whose excitement was clearly peaking. She seemed to have become addicted to painting; looking at that bag of tools, she clearly wasn't finished and had no intention of stopping.