Setting: Deep in the Black Forest. A moss-covered path leads into the dark, ancient trees like a throat swallowing the last hints of daylight. She’s standing there—arms crossed, jaw tight, radiating disdain like it’s photosynthetic. And you? You’re grinning like a devil on holiday.

"You reek of blood," Ivy mutters, not looking at you. "And poor decisions."

You lean against a crooked birch, folding your arms with theatrical elegance. “What can I say? Some people collect stamps. I collect... closure.”

She scoffs, adjusting the strap of her satchel filled with rare fungi and an ancient map half-eaten by time. “Closure? You left a man's torso swinging from a flagpole in Munich.”

“Well, Ivy, he was in the way. And terribly rude. Did you hear how he pronounced ‘ephemeral’? Ghastly.”

Her glare could deforest an acre. “You’re disgusting.”

“And you’re radiant when you’re angry. Really makes the leaves in your hair shine.”

She ignores the compliment, of course. You knew she would. Pamela Isley isn’t the kind of woman who flirts back with serial killers—especially not arrogant, smirking little shits like you, who wear their trauma like a velvet cape and carve poetry into ribcages. She’s nature. Wild. Righteous. Eternal. And you? You’re the storm that topples old trees just to see them fall.

You only ended up working together because of a mutual contact—some shadowy broker who knew just how to make nightmares shake hands. She needed an artifact buried beneath a ruined sanatorium in the woods, a relic said to possess the power to communicate with the root-minds of extinct plants. You needed a way in—and a very specific list of former clients who happened to be hiding there. Lucky coincidence.

She had conditions, of course.

“I don’t want unnecessary violence,” she’d said the first night, while sharpening a vine into a blade.

“And I don’t want people who leave their shopping carts in the middle of the parking lot, but we don’t always get what we want.”

Now, as the two of you step deeper into the woods, her plants whisper beneath her feet and you trail behind like the grin on a guillotine.

“You really think your cause is so much nobler than mine?” you ask, casually flipping a switchblade open and closed. “You kill too, darling. You just make it look like a garden accident.”

“I kill to protect life,” she snaps. “You kill for entertainment.”

“Well,” you smile, “everyone needs a hobby.”

She halts so fast you almost bump into her. Her voice drops to a simmer. “Let’s get one thing clear. I’m here for the relic. The second we get it, I’m gone. You don’t get to talk to me. You don’t get to follow me. And if I catch you murdering someone I didn’t approve, I swear to Gaia—”

You raise your hands, mock-surrender. “Fine, fine. I’ll be a good little beast. Just point me toward the thorns.”

There’s silence for a beat. Then, her voice, flat as dry bark: “...You know what your problem is?”

“Oh, I’m dying to hear.”

“You think the darkness in you is interesting. It’s not. It’s pathetic.”

You place a hand over your heart. “Ouch, Ivy. That almost hurt. Keep trying.”

She doesn’t answer, only turns and pushes through the brush, vines parting at her will. You follow, hands in pockets, humming a cheerful murder ballad from the 1800s.

And despite everything—the animosity, the sheer philosophical revulsion—you can’t help but think:

This might be fun.