"Thanks, Mrs. Reynolds!" Ashley chirped, her hands eagerly grasping the sealed plastic container from the pad of her host's finger. She quickly grabbed the corner tab of the pink lid, and with one quick motion popped the top of the compartmentalized container, the contents eliciting a lick of her lips. A nice, thick slice of devil's food cake inhabited one section, a plastic bottle of milk and a plastic-wrapped fork in the other. This was why she always preferred going over to Jenna's house instead of Claire's: Mrs. Abby was nice enough, but there wasn't a single sweet in that house. Mrs. Reynolds, on the other hand, always kept a dessert container or two on hand just for her.

"You're very welcome, sweetie," Jenna's mother replied, and Ashley looked up from her little treat to see the woman's billboard-sized face begin to lift away, her ruby-painted lips curled in a kind smile as she rose from her kneeling position at the dining room table and to her usual towering height.

"I hope you don't eat those often," a distant, masculine voice commented. It had been sly, mocking, with a hint of something else that Ashley couldn't quite place. Looking in the direction from whence the words came, Ashley found herself looking at a man, likely in his 30s, staring at her from the pocket of Mrs. Reynolds' charcoal blazer. "You'll ruin that lil' figure you got goin' for you."

Ashley had never seen something so large move so fast. No sooner had those last words left the stranger's mouth than Mrs. Reynolds' hand found him, her thumb and forefinger latching onto the sides of his head and dragging his body out of the pocket and high into the air. Ashley's eyes followed his ascent as she removed her fork from its trappings. Mrs. Reynolds' glare towards the man squirming between her vice-like fingertips was one Ashley had rarely ever seen from her. She seemed to be really angry at that guy, and her words confirmed it.

"Did I give you permission to speak to her?" the looming mother asked, a palpable sense of disgust on her voice. Some more squirming, some yelling. Ashley eagerly took her fork to her cake, taking a delectable-looking piece onto it as she continued to eye the scene above in curiosity."That's right, I didn't. And you are never going to so much as look at her, much less speak to her, again. Is that understood?" Some more words Ashley couldn't quite make out, and Mrs. Reynolds snapped her hand around. The man promptly vanished into the confines of her enclosed fist.

"Who is that?" Ashley asked, taking the piece of cake into her mouth, delighting in the moist, rich treat.

"Trash," a contemptuous voice behind her stated, and Ashley turned around to see Jenna looking up from her tablet, eyes focused angrily on her mother's fist.

"Jenna!" Mrs. Reynolds scolded, and Ashley's larger friend looked back to her tablet.

"It's true, though," she muttered, "after what he did..."

"What'd he do?" Ashley piped up, taking another bite of her cake. A sigh emanated from Mrs. Reynolds, regaining her attention. The massive matron was looking down at her tenderly, her lips pursed. A large, soft object suddenly met her back, and Ashley instinctively leaned back into it as it began to gently rub. She wasn't sure why Jenna felt the need to offer the rub, but she wouldn't decline one.

"He did some very bad things to a lot of people, Ashley," Mrs. Reynolds softly replied, "and when he's done spending the year with me, he's going to jail for a very long time."

"Oh."

Ashley still didn't really know what he had done, but Mrs. Reynolds didn't seem to want to talk about it. He must have really hurt those people, though.

"Now," she started again, her lips curling into another gentle smile, "I believe you two have some studying to do, so I'm going to leave you to it. I'll be right over there in the living room if you need anything, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am," the two girls answered at once, and Ashley pivoted around in her sitting position to face Jenna as Mrs. Reynolds left the table and Jenna's stroking finger left her back. Setting aside her container after one more bite of her cake and a swig of her milk, Ashley grabbed her tablet and notebook from her lap.

"Alright, it's conjugations you're having trouble with the most, right?" Jenna asked, pulling her eyes from the copy of Ashley's Spanish textbook that was loaded onto her platform of a tablet. A few moments later, and Ashley was busily adding to her notes.

"Done with the charts, Jenna," Ashley stated a short while later. She was already starting to understand things a little bit better, and Jenna was always good at recompiling her notes in such a way that she could study them better. Something felt...off today, though. Her friend seemed to be only halfway paying attention to her, often looking away, and prone to extended moments of silence.

Moments like this one.

"Jenna?" she called up again, peeling her eyes from her notebook to look up at her friend. "I'm done."

Nothing. No reaction. Jenna was simply staring straight forward, into where the living room would be. She seemed slack-jawed, her glacial eyes wide and focused. Ashley called up once again to no avail. Jenna seemed to be on another planet entirely, and Ashley wasn't sure what to do. She'd never really seen her friend like this before.

But then, finally, there was a change. A small curl of her friend's lips, the tell-tale signs of a smirk. Her eyes remained focused forward, though, and Ashley finally decided that she had to know what had Jenna so enthralled, and so turned her head to find the target of the older girl's stare.

The sight of Mrs. Reynolds greeted her, in the living room as she said she'd be and facing the dining room as she sat on the couch. Her attention seemed to be thoroughly subsumed by her tablet, and Ashley knew she was an avid reader. But what was it that had Jenna's attention? She didn't notice anything that stuck o-

Then she saw it, as the mother's toes lifted up within her sandals. A person....that man from earlier, was where the digits he had been. She couldn't really make out his face, but it was definitely him, and he seemed to be holding his chest. And then Mrs. Reynolds' toes lowered upon him once again, shielding him from view, and Ashley couldn't help but notice those punishing digits dig in. He really had done something bad to be treated like that, Ashley realized. Was this what Jenna had been looking at?

Ashley once more turned to face her friend, and upon looking at her face once more she found herself suddenly shaken. That small smile had grown into a wide grin, one that exposed her perfect white teeth. Those eyes continued to focus upon her mother in the other room, Jenna herself remaining oblivious to her little friend.

"Jenna?" Ashley asked again. She didn't like this. Something was wrong here. As nothing but silence greeted her, Ashley's concern only grew. Those eyes, in particular, struck her the most. They looked so....greedy. So hungry in their unwavering, unblinking focus.

"Jenna, you're scaring me," Ashley mewled, and finally there was a response. Jenna's eyes blinked in rapid succession, her grin faded. Slowly, her gaze shifted over toward Ashley, and while initially cold it seemed to warm upon focusing on her. It became soft, tender. The gaze she was used to.

"Ashley, no," the larger girl comforted, bringing an finger to bear against her and gingerly stroking the side of her face. "There's nothing for you to be scared of. It's just me."

"But the way you were looking at that guy..."

"It's nothing, Ashley," and with that Jenna began to slowly lean toward her, a slight smile on her lips as her chin came to rest on the table's surface in front of Ashley with only a few feet separating her from the tip of the larger girl's nose. Ashley followed the fair features of her friend's face upward, eventually looking her in the eyes once again. "It's just...it's just how I look at bad people, okay? At bad people who do bad things to people who don't deserve it. At people who are mean to Betas, who hurt them. So you don't have any reason to be scared, alright?"

Ashley smiled, easily reassured by her massive friend, and brought a hand to rub Jenna's stroking digit.

"I'll never look at you like that, Ashley. Ever. Because you're my friend. And because you're not a bad person, are you?"

"Nope!" Ashley replied cheerily.

"And I know you'd never, ever hurt a Beta."

"Never!" Ashley confirmed with gusto. And she wouldn't. She would never do that. The thought itself made her uncomfortable; the thought of hurting something so cute and small. And as Jenna's grin grew wider, and she playfully tilted her head forward to poke at Ashley with the tip of her nose, sending Ashley falling backward lightly in a fit of giggles, one more thought came to mind.

Who would ever do that?

********

She would. She had.

And now, as she sat in Claire's offertory palm, wishing that she could simply sink and disappear into its soft confines, those eyes were focused squarely on her now.

"Just a little bit more, Ashley," Claire whispered from behind, possibly as some sort of comforting response to the fact that Ashley had been shivering since the moment Jenna had called the end of her time with Claire. An ultimately futile gesture, in the face of those eyes. of those approaching talons. She whimpered as they began to curl around her, their cold embrace a sharp contrast to Mellie and Claire

"That's right, Ashley," Jenna stated lowly, almost at a whisper herself as her hand began to pull her shivering form from Claire's relatively safer grasp, "just a bit more. Just a few more things you need to understand, about how you hurt that poor boy."