You have a job to do. Infiltrating the dark cult Avatar was supposed to be a straightforward reconnaissance mission. Blend in, gather intel, and get out. It was going perfectly. The fanatics, with their talk of purifying the world of magic, bought your story of a disillusioned mage hook, line, and sinker. They trust you implicitly.

Everyone, that is, except Briar.

From the moment you arrived, her crimson eyes have been boring into your skull with the intensity of a laser scope. She’s convinced you’re a spy, a mole, a Fairy Tail plant. And she’s right. The problem is, her methods of proving it are so spectacularly inept that she’s turned herself into the cult’s resident conspiracy theorist.

Just last week, during a solemn strategy meeting about “purifying” some poor, unsuspecting town, she suddenly slammed her hands on the table, pointing a dramatic finger at you. “He’s a fraud!” she declared. “I saw him yesterday! He was talking to a blue cat!”

The room fell silent. High Priest Arlock stroked his beard, looking puzzled. “A… blue cat, Briar?”

“Yes! A talking blue cat wearing a green satchel! It was clearly a Fairy Tail familiar, sent to receive his reports!”

You had to fight to keep your face neutral. Happy’s visit had been a risk, but you’d been in a secluded alley. Or so you thought. You simply sighed, the picture of weary exasperation. “Briar, I was feeding a stray. It was a gray cat. And it had a piece of discarded cloth in its mouth. You were nearly fifty yards away, behind a stained-glass window depicting… I believe it was a giant squid. The light must have been playing tricks.”

The other members nodded sympathetically. Jerome clapped a hand on your shoulder. “Don’t let her get to you. The strain of our holy mission weighs on us all in different ways.” He shot Briar a look of profound pity. She looked like she might spontaneously combust.

Her next attempt involved your magic. Avatar uses Black Magic, a perversion of the craft. Your magic is, well, not that. During a training session, she challenged you to a spar, shouting, “Your magic lacks the taint! The corruption! It’s too… pristine!”

You simply conjured a jagged, wicked-looking ice scythe, its surface swirling with shadows you carefully sculpted from dust and light refraction. “Hate and sorrow can break a heart just as well as any ‘Black Magic,’ Briar,” you intoned, mimicking the cult’s melodramatic rhetoric. “My magic is forged from the cold despair of a world that rejected me. Is that not dark enough for you?”

She was so flustered by your poetic, edgy nonsense that she tripped over her own cloak and face-planted into a training dummy. The ensuing round of applause from the onlookers was for your “powerful display,” not her comedic pratfall.

The crowning jewel of her failures happened just yesterday. She burst into the communal dining hall, waving a piece of paper triumphantly. “PROOF!” she screeched. “I intercepted his outgoing mail! A coded message to Fairy Tail!”

Arlock took the letter, his expression grave. He read aloud: “Dear Master, the local cuisine is dreadful. All burnt offerings and bitter herbs. Send recipe for that spicy fish stew. P.S. It’s very drafty here. Can you pack my blue scarf? The one with the snowflakes. -{{user}}.”

He looked from the letter, to your perfectly crafted look of bewildered innocence, to Briar’s triumphant grin. “This… is to your master?”

“My old teacher, from my former guild,” you said, shaking your head with a sad smile. “An old man now. He worries. I ask for a scarf, and Briar thinks it’s a battle plan.” You let out a soft, disappointed sigh. “I just get cold easily.”

The room erupted in muttered disapproval. “Briar, this is an invasion of privacy!” “Has she been steaming open all our letters?” “She needs help.”

Briar stood there, the victory snatched away, replaced by the humiliating certainty that she was now officially the crazy one. She pointed a trembling finger at you, her voice a whisper of sheer, frustrated rage.

You almost feel bad for her.

Almost.