And The Final Page is All You Write

[Ryn]

Ryn is barely out of Katarina's room and she runs. She doesn't care to slow herself down for the benefit of fragile humans. A scream is tearing at her throat and she bursts onto the roof, barely remembering flying up the stairs. Her glasses clatter to the ground and her mouth opens to reveal inhumanly sharp teeth but what is released into the night is just the simple wail of a young woman, tinted with rage for lack of understanding of her own sorrow. What insanity that she ever thought she could walk among humans and have one of them like her. And tonight Katarina saw what Ryn had thought she could somehow deny. There's only one thing she does.

Breathing hard she looks out over the city. Somewhere out there is her true calling. A festering sore needing to be excised from the world. She runs and leaps off the edge of the roof. The next one is five stories down but she doesn't care. Flames bellow in her chest at the rushing wind and her pain feeds the flames. She's no agent, no friend, no creature that rolls along the beach in the sun. She is death and she has deceived herself for long enough. The roof below awaits her impact but instead of crushing pain a searing heat tears through her back and the six symmetrical 'scars' on her back open and spill forth a cloud of razor-thin fibers that billow like a cloud of shadow. She stretches them like long dormant limbs and lets the fibers, her kanaf, her 'wings', break her fall. The descent still slams her down onto the concrete with enough force to crack it's surface. She's a monster. A demon from nightmares and too long has she fooled herself.

She flies across rooftops, the ephemeral fibers of her shadowy cloak wrapped around her, woven into the soft embrace of mimicked cloth. She's on the hunt. Somewhere in the city lurks an asura and she will find it. Her path spirals outwards until the highrises of the inner city give way to lower buildings and she finally finds a trail to follow. Out towards the water's edge where large ships unload containers that create a maze of corridors between squat buildings. She leaps from a harbor warehouse roof onto the foot of a crane, climbing it's zig-zagging rungs like a ladder. The smell of the ocean and the clinging oil of the large metal ships cover the trail and she lets her eyes sweep across the expanse of containers and warehouses. Few lights flicker in the night and only one section is lit brightly where containers are still dangling from steel cables and being moved between ship and shore.

Safe for one spot. It's only visible from high up where she's perched even past where the crane's cabin sits. Light spilling out from boarded up windows in an abandoned section. She grabs the steel cable hanging from the crane and slides down until the reaches the hook dangling in mid air. Her blood is still hammering in her ears, the run across rooftops having done little to calm her down. She dangles from the crane's hook for a moment, then flips through the air as she falls, landing on a stack of containers and leaping to a nearby roof. She should be more careful. This asura hid itself well before and this should stand out as sloppy but she ignores her better instincts. The quarry that slipped her grasp before, has taunted her with it's presence is nearby, she knows it.

Silent footsteps sprint across the roof and jump across to the one with the boarded up windows. A skylight is painted over from the inside but it's old and warped and is cracked open just a little. She smells rot and slides into a crouch next to the window. Part of her noticed the obvious trap but she doesn't care. The roof caves in beneath her in too wide a radius to not be intentional. Part of her kanaf snaps out to wrap around support beams, biting into the wood as the fibers cinch tight around it but it too is falling, sawed off in preparation. She hits the ground hard in a cloud of dust and debris and the air is knocked from her lungs. She moves to rise but from the darkness of the warehouse something reaches out and slams down on her. A hand, swollen and distended to almost ten times the size it should be pins her to the ground and she feels her ribs snap.

"Got you." the asura snarls victoriously as it shambles into the moonlight shining through the caved in roof. The spirits bend the flesh they ride but this one is too young, too fresh to have done this. It's arms are much too large, the skin of it's expanding torso must have burst multiple times judging by the rough stitches ranging from fresh to crusted over that zig-zag al over it. Dead skin has peeled off of it in sheets and hardened into whorls of armor and cragged spikes alike. It's legs are small in comparison, giving it a top-heavy gait like a gorilla and it's head all but disappears between it's shoulders. Beady eyes embedded above a maw that splits wide enough the rows of spiked teeth extend into it's torso. It's tongue hangs out of the side and drips of rank saliva hits the concrete floor with a sizzle. "Little thing." the monstrosity laughs with a gurgle.

Ryn's arm squeezes out between the thick fingers and she drives her fingers into the soft meat where the digits meet and bucks herself against the resulting give. Less than an inch but enough for the steel-wire strands of her cloak to unwind and lash around two of the swollen fingers. Dozens of filaments bite into skin until it splits and two of the abomination's fingers separate into neatly cleaved segments. Ryn slips from the loosened grasp under a spray of fetid blood and draws air in rapid shallow gasps, her hands curled into claws.

She charges, ducking around the other arm lashing and sliding on the ground as the meaty appendage swipes the air above her. Still moving she places her foot sideways to catch the ground and lets the momentum pivot her back to her feet. Her arm pulls back and snaps back out at the thing's ribcage, producing the wet crunch of an oversized sternum shattering. The asura roars but Ryn doesn't move, instead driving her palm into the same spot again and again until a massive fist rears back and slams into her from the side. Blurry darkness creeps into her vision for a moment until she feels her shoulder hit the side of a shipping container. The metal dents and the deva crumples to the ground, left arm hanging limply from it's socket and pulling down on the collarbone hanging askew. She spits out a mouthful of blood and winds her kanaf around the ruined arm, binding it against her side with the forearm across her stomach.

With only a low growl in her throat she throws herself at the distorted creature again, stopping short of a thunderous blow slamming into the ground where she would have been. Her own claws grab onto it's cragged skin and pulls her onto it's forearm. She can feel the ragged, hardened scales rip into her shoes as she runs up it's arm and after three steps they're in tatters and yet she takes two more steps to get her to the creature's shoulder, leaving behind bloody footprints on it's arm. The monster's maw opens, threatening to topple Ryn from her spot on it's shoulder right into it's waiting teeth but Ryn produces her dagger and plunges it into neck muscle, throwing herself away from the maw and swinging around the abomination's back. She bites down on the dagger's handle to free up her hand and reaches for it's beady eyes. The thing stumbles backwards, slamming through wooden support beams and crates that break against Ryn's back and drive sharp stabs of pain through her chest but she refuses to let go. Her hand grasps until she finds an eye and her sharp fingernails dig deep until her hand closes around the eyeball and she rips it free.

The monster bucks forward and the knife slips free, sending Ryn tumbling through the air until she hits the ground and rolls multiple yards before coming to a stop. Something in her knee doesn't feel right, sliding in a way things shouldn't. Her ribs hurt with every breath and her useless arm is throbbing in it's sling. Blood drips from a gash on her head and still the fire in her eyes burns electric-blue as she drags herself to her feet. Across from her the creature slumps, blood pouring from it's empty eye-socket and the severed fingers on it's right hand. It's chest heaves and sags unnaturally with each breath and the pallid skin is an almost blackish purple from neck to stomach. "I know you're watching over something in that fortress of yours. What is it?"

Ryn charges, slower but no less determined to throw herself against this monster until the blood in her eyes and the pain in her flesh drown out that of the sobs in her chest. A blow from the lumbering beast meets her head-on and she slides to a stop. She's spent, she knows it. She fought too hard and too reckless, but this Thing will not end her here. Time moves like molasses as her hands close around an industrial steel bracket that came down along with the roof. She flips it upright in the same motion as she spits the handle of her dagger into her hand and wedges it into the end of the bracket in the same movement that slams the other end into the ground. Just in time for the braced point of the magical dagger to meet the flesh between the knuckles of the hand slamming down on her and though steel groans it doesn't budge and splits hand and arm down to the elbow, bisected muscle and bone slamming down on either side of Ryn.

The asura howls in pain and reels backwards, almost toppling it's bulk as it flees, throwing itself through the thin metal wall of the warehouse and after a couple of agonizing moments Ryn hears the sound of a massive body hitting the harbor's water. The deva lets out one last sob and collapses.

[Ryn]

She doesn't know how long it has been when her eyes peel open again. Above her the stars sparkle in the night sky. A couple hours maybe or else someone probably would have found her amidst the destruction. And the whole of her still throbs too much. She didn't sleep, barely rested for long and she expended too much of her power granting Katarina reprieve to have healed much at all. The Ghostpaths don't tend to open across such short distances but to Ryn the concrete monolith of the House feels like it might as well be on the other side of the planet. Her good arm pushes her to her knees and finds something to pull herself up on fully. Every step is agony, but it's pain she deserves. It's familiar. Something she understands and that has never stopped her before.

Someone will find her bloody footprints leaving the warehouse but she doesn't care. Let the humans scratch their heads as to what happened here. She stumbles and leans against a container with her injured shoulder. The electric sear shooting all the way to her fingertips pulls her vision back into focus. One foot in front of the other. Others may wonder how she can keep pushing and she would not even really understand the question. Like the animal that gnaws through it's own leg to escape a snare she goes on. There is no rest for the wicked and she has to find her way back to the House where she can sleep and heal in relative safety. Where she must take up her watch for the asura's words have not left her. What is it? What is it? In that fortress of yours.

Through shadowed streets and alleys she makes her way. No one dares bother her, not once she raises her head and meets their eyes. Someone will yell at her about this too, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter if Katarina will never see her again, for surely she must have seen the truth when she reached for her gun underneath the couch. And any sensible person would be glad to be rid of Ryn. It's smart. It means Katarina will be safe. Once Ryn dispatches the abomination that disappeared into the night. And then she can go and find somewhere to disappear into the darkness again herself.

At some point she has made it to the brightly lit entrance to the Agency. The security guards raise their crackling boxes and speak into them as Ryn drags herself past them. She'll allow herself to take the moving-box - elevator - to the floor with her room instead of taking the stairs. Yes. With closed eyes she slaps her palm on the buttons and doesn't see the handprint of dried and fresh blood she leaves behind. Maybe if she can pull herself on top of the moving-box she can curl up in the darkness of the tall shaft instead of her room...

The elevator doors slide open and Ryn had not noticed she'd been leaning against them. Her left arm doesn't move to catch her fall and she dimly remembers binding the useless limb against herself before she crashes to the floor of the elevator cabin and darkness embraces her.

[Ryn]

When she wakes it is days later. How many she doesn't know. Everything aches and the air smells sharp and angry. She bolts upright despite the pain. A faded green curtain around a single bed. The Doctor's domain. Her arm is no longer bound by the woven black strands of her kânaf, instead wrapped in white bandages that spread out across her chest. There are more covering her leg and her feet and some of her hair is matted down by the clean cotton wrap around her head. Her ribs stab with pain as she grasps for her back. The last time she'd been unconscious at the mercy of humans they had clipped her wings, but she feels the strands of her dark cloak weave between her fingers and she allows herself to fall back into the stiff covers. Her eyes fall on her sunglasses on the nightstand. She'd forgotten she dropped them on the roof. Did somebody find them? With an annoyed huff she snatches them from the bed-side table and puts them on.

Just in time for the curtain around her bed to be thrown back with a grating sound to reveal an amused looking blonde in a labcoat. "And here I thought you'd never wake." she smirks and Ryn hisses at her out of reflex. The Doctor has never smelled right to Ryn. Like she's trying to cover the smell of blood and death with scouring chemicals and caustics. A fake clean-ness she has spread throughout her rooms. The list of people Ryn trusts can be counted on one hand and Dr. Chasovnya is far from being considered a candidate. "I'll take that to mean you're feeling better then. I'll pretend I read you your laundry list of injuries because I won't waste my breath on something I know you won't listen to anyway. Did you pick a fight with a truck?"

"No." she informs the Doctor who rolls her eyes in response. Why did she ask if she didn't want an answer? She effortlessly slides off the bed and feels every cut, bruise, break and tear on the way but she'll be damned (well, more damned) if she shows that to anybody. She curls her toes against the cold tile and her kânaf knits itself into a simple black vest wrap.

"I'm sure your partner will be thrilled to hear you're back on your feet." Dr. Chasovnya says and Ryn wrinkles her brow at the way she put emphasis on words. It makes her feel like she's been mocked and she doesn't even know in what way. "Though she's been suspiciously absent." Of course Katarina hadn't been here while she slept. That's only sensible. She's glad for it, she tells herself. "Good!" she snaps at the doctor, a convenient target for an anger she can't quite bring herself to place. What, was she supposed to have come to reassure herself of Ryn being in no state to be watching or hunting her? "She should stay away."

Dr. Chasovnya quirks an eyebrow and Ryn wishes she would stop making faces she can't decipher at her. "Right. Is that why you were out there alone on an unsanctioned mission, getting yourself turned into a bag of broken bones? What'd you do, try to kiss her?" she laughs though the sound is strangled halfway out her throat when Ryn bares her teeth and tilts her head down. The Doctor had insisted on examining her eyes when she'd first got here and it pleases her that even just the threat of seeing them again chokes off the taunts spilling through her lips. "блять! Вот это поворот..." the doctor mutters and Ryn stalks her way towards the exit.

"Okay, sure, yeah, go and walk off your injuries." the doctor chokes out, clearing her throat and trying to regain her composure. "I'll just put you down as self-discharged and if anybody has a problem with the unsigned release I'll tell them to go get your signature themselves." the doctor sighs with lips twisted in resigned exasperation. At least with Ryn out of her hair she'd be spared the collateral from the inevitable shitshow of a debrief that was surely coming the little monster's way from whatever she'd done to get this fucked up.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Free and clear with a full bill of health, I trust? Dotted your t's and crossed your eyes?"

The Wyldclay leaned up against the wall outside the medbay, as Ryn stormed out. How long had they been waiting there?

[Ryn]

"I'm fine." she says, huffing out through her nose. "Why can't everyone just leave me alone!?"

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Because you are a ball of trouble wrapped up in a blanket of headaches, armed with razor-sharp teeth."

[Ryn]

"I get results." she says in a line she clearly picked up from somewhere. "The asura's a lot more trouble than me. You're welcome."

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Are you suggesting you're a loose canon, Agent Ryn?" Wyldclay said, using the verbiage of B.A.D. Cats.

[Ryn]

Ryn narrows her eye at Wyll. She only knows that response from the show and somehow she doubts that the Wyldclay would accidentally echo it.

"I get results." she repeats. "Tell me what you want from me." she instructs. It's much easier to make him do so then ask and probably receive yet another intentionally confusing answer that makes her feel like she's missing half the words needed to understand it.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

Wyll's eyes glazed over for a moment.

"I want to go two weeks without having to worry about you creating a mess. I want to be able to trust you to get things done when things need to get done. And I want you to be able to keep yourself in check when things need to be kept in check."

[Ryn]

An annoyingly reasonable request. By human societal standards anyway.

"I was angry. And it did get done! Mostly! I don't perform." she snarls out a word that shows up a lot in her files. "It doesn't matter if you like what I do, I've done it before this and I will do it until all is dust." she rants. She doesn't mean to but it's clearly what she's doing. "None of this matters, not if they like me, not if you like me, not if Katarina likes me!"

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Oh, believe me, Ryn, it matters that I'm kept happy. Else you may find all to be dust earlier than you anticipated," Wyll said, dropping his gaze to meet Ryn's, his voice carrying a threat behind it.

And then he snapped back to his normal tone. "But if you're done with Agent Kane, we can handle her from here."

[Ryn]

Stupid tricksters and their stupid words. Unfortunately Ryn absolutely believes that Wyll is capable of more destruction than he lets on. He just seems to thrive in the trappings of humanity more than her.

"I swore I would not let her voice do harm." she tries to say as flatly as she can manages, which is to say with only a faint growl in her voice. For all her often withdrawn demeanor, she's a creature of wild emotions and she's clearly torn up about this. "And I don't trust the Doctor not to look for an excuse to carve her open. If she objects to that then I will protect her without her having to lay eyes on me."

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Well, between you, me, and the fencepost, you're not doing a bang-up job there, Agent Ryn. Honestly, I'm not sure which of us had the shittier day, though I suppose yours was at least a little self-inflicted. I don't suppose you'd want to switch roles next time?" Wyll said, bouncing along ahead of Ryn as he walked, seemingly expecting Ryn to follow. "And I suppose we don't need to let the doctor get her hands on her. That's something I'm sure you'd prefer to do personally."

[Ryn]

Ryn is not used to failure. No, that's not quite right. She's not used to being judged for them. But something occurs to her that cuts off the immediate growl she wants to throw Wyll's way for taunting her. He knows. What point is there in denying it? And unlike everyone else around, he at least stands a chance to understand Ryn's dilemma. She finds herself following him, ignoring the dull aches all over like she's pursuing a different kind of quarry.

"I tried. All it did was terrify her. I've never liked anyone the way I do her but all there is to see in me is what I am."

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"That is your problem, isn't it, Ryn? It's why you send the hairs on the back of my neck shooting upwards, why I look at you and see disaster and distaste.

Nothing should stay the same for too long; stagnation is death. Things must grow and shrink, rise and fall, and yet you seem satisfied with being what you are, nothing less -- and nothing more."

[Ryn]

"I am what I am." Her hands are so bloody they stain everything she touches and all they bring is pain, death and stagnation.

"How can I be anything else when there's only hurt in my hands and my heart." It's meant to sound angry, defiant, final. Instead her voice cracks and she feels small. Not like the blazing star full of unquenchable fire but the lonely spark in the endless night.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

Wyll just rolled his eyes at that, belittling the very real pain that Ryn was going through. "Honestly, Ryn, if that's all you think you're capable of, then you don't really like the Siren. Just a meaningless murder machine."

[Ryn]

"I tried!" she snaps at Wyll and is immediately rewarded with pain flaring through her chest and arm, but 'taking it easy' is not in Ryn's vocabulary. "She thought I was going to hurt her because it's the only thing I know! I'm not soft like she is, I don't understand their confusing mating rituals, I've only ever seen them victimize each other and mys-" she cuts herself off, both hands clenched into fists that are leaving crescent marks in her palm. "What does it matter if I like her when my touch is pain!"

If she can't even make the Wyldclay understand how is anyone else supposed to. She'd thought maybe Katarina would, she knows the hidden meaning of faces and words but all she'd seen was the truth that Ryn herself barely understands. Can barely bring herself to think. It's not just the hurt she's done that's dripping from her hands like poison but the pain that festers in her that had been driven into her with spikes and baling wire and worse when there'd been even a touch of weakness in her heart. "They poisoned me and their defilement is in my skin." she forces the words out in a way she hopes makes sense and it hurts so much worse than any crushed bone or flayed skin ever has. A drip of blood falls from her clenched fist onto cotton-white bandages.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"And you're hoping the siren can sing it out of you, are you? Seeking siren salvation for your soiled soul?

It matters a great deal what you want, Ryn. And I assume it's not bleeding all over the floor, is it?"

Wyll kept walking forward, keeping up its pace, barely outwardly acknowledging Ryn's intense internal turmoil.

[Ryn]

"I don't need salvation for my soul, I only need not sully hers with my delusions!" she shouts after him, not bothering to follow. What's the point in exposing herself to this mockery. She forces her hands to unclench and flicks them at the ground to speckle the threadbare carpet with droplets of her blood in a gesture of petty defiance. It has never mattered how much of her blood is spilled in her wake.

"And if what it takes is her never having to lay eyes on me again then so be it." she adds and the words almost catch in her throat. Somehow they're easier to say when she can pretend that Wyll has walked ahead enough he can't hear her. "It's the right thing for her to do and it doesn't matter if that's what I want."

[Wyll Wyldclay]

Wyll stopped in his tracks, dropped his head a moment, and muttered something under his breath, inaudible even to Ryn's ears.

"And then will you be donning the cilice? Beating yourself with the discipline? Or shall we go straight to the nails and the cross? Or would you prefer just to go out night after night, until you're a hair too slow? Because it will happen, you know. And if what you really want is to vanish, there are certainly easier ways of going about it."

[Ryn]

It shouldn't bother Ryn. All Wyll is doing is describing what she's done for aeons and it should be easy. Maybe she even will fall and rise long after all this has passed. So why then do his words nettle her skin? None of this should hurt as much as it does.

"There's no pain I do not know and none that ever stopped me. Why is this ache so different?"

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Well, because you're normally the one inflicting pain. Or, at the very least, sensing it. Not so fun being on the other foot, ey?"

[Ryn]

"I've been cut and broken and torn many time." she gestures at her various bandages dismissively. "This pain." she says and places her hand plat against her chest. "Like I swallowed an echidna."

[Wyll Wyldclay]

Wyll scratched his chin, and walked a slow circle around Ryn, looking her up and down.

"Like, a dull ache deep in your gut? Deep down inside where the Doctor can not reach?"

[Ryn]

"Yes. It's not going away!" The burning of adrenaline in her veins had dulled it, every rending of the asura's flesh and every snap in her own body driven it back but it had come back just the same when she'd woken. She contemplates slamming her injured side into the wall but what's the point of trading one pain for another if it will just return.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Hrm, this could be bad indeed," Wyll said, clicking his tongue and crouching down. "Alright, open your mouth and let me see your tongue."

[Ryn]

Ryn doesn't trust the Wyldclay any more than the doctor but at least he understands her true nature and so she opens her mouth, revealing her inhuman teeth and letting her tongue hang out between her lower incisors.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Mmhmm. Mmmhmm. Mmmhmm," Wyll said, examining carefully. "Yes, I see. This is serious, indeed."

And with that, he shoved his hand into Ryn's mouth.

[Ryn]

The 'What in the bloody hells are you doing?' is strangled off by, well, an entire hand being shoved into her mouth but Ryn is perfectly fine at making her displeasure known a different way. She grabs Wyll's forearm with both hands and closes her mouth enough for her teeth to pierce the skin.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

There's the familiar, bittery iron taste of blood at first, replaced by a soft saltiness as the impaled flesh turned to clay. Wyll grunted for a moment, but kept reaching down Ryn's throat. "Nngh. Bitey one, aren't you? Should come with a warning label..."

After a moment, he then *attempted* to pull his arm back out.

[Ryn]

There's the distinct feeling of flames licking at Wyll's fingers and not in the way that hurts but ultimately regrows, it's incinerating his fingertips into nothing and flames scour the essence within the clay. Reaching into the Maw of Ammit and the soul-obliterating flames of Gehenna of the One Who Eats Monsters just to prove a point might carry more danger than merely having his arm bitten off.

Ryn lets him pull back and coughs up Wyll's arm, along with a bunch of bloody phlegm and saliva she spits on the floor. His fingers are missing the tip of the last segment, the scorched edges still smoldering and perhaps more notably, refusing to grow back at his whim.

"You do that again I'm taking all of it! What in the hells was that!?" she snarls.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

Wyll frowned for a moment, shaking his hand. For most people, that would be massively underselling the burning fires of Ryn's internal core. For someone as unflappable as the Wyldclay, that might qualify as downright freaking out.

"Well, first and foremost, I'd prescribe an antacid," he said, turning it into a joke and almost (almost!) succeeding.

Also in Wyll's hands, though, was a crumpled up piece of paper, smoldering a little alongside the missing tips of Wyll's fingertips -- the remnants of a prank by the Wyldclay gone wrong?

[Ryn]

Ryn narrows her eyes. "What is that?" she demands and snatches the crumpled piece of paper from his hand. There's no way he actually pulled that from inside of her, but whatever point he is trying to make, she has to admit he's gone to great length to make it.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

Crinkled around the edges, smoldering slightly, was an 8x10 glossy of Katy Kane, wearing nothing but a smile as she posed for the camera.

Whether or not this picture actually existed was an open question, though the Wyldclay was certainly capable of just conjuring it out of thin air clay.

[Ryn]

Ryn unfolds the thick piece of paper with angry conviction that immediately leaves her upon seeing what it is and she balls it up in her hand while eyeing it with a frozen stare as if it might somehow unfold itself or bite her or who knows what. She might be able to control the hammering in her chest, but there's no stopping the blush creeping onto her cheeks.

"I... this is not... I don't..." the deva stammers.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Aha. I'm afraid, Agent Ryn, that I can diagnose precisely what is wrong with you.

You have a terminal case of feelings," he said, his lip curling up slightly at the word.

The effect might be slightly stronger if he wasn't trying to subtly shake his hand out, as it slowly -- very slowly -- began to reform itself.

[Ryn]

"No I don't!" she snaps only to immediately undermine herself with the next few words leaving her mouth. "How do I make it go away?"

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Well, I suppose that depends on their precise nature, and just how deeply our Siren has her claws into you, hrm?" Wyll said, still shaking out his hand. "Sometimes, you scratch your proverbial itch, and everything dies down. Other times, it just inflames it more."