The man was too stupid to believe.“Yeah,” he gushed. “Since I got a 99.9% I’ll be the father. If we could just help him study to the point whe...re he gets better than fifty percent, they’ll let him slide. That’s what they did for me in school. Then he can be the step-father. Shit ... maybe we could do it like they do on TV. You and the kid can live with the step-father, so I don’t have to do shit. Maybe you guys could pay me a big ass check and I could sign my rights away. Then years from now if. Blah blah blah."They stopped walking, and the Joker turned toward Batman. "They do loveto whine, ya know. But me? I understand how lucky we are. Youcomplete us. Without you, we wouldn't be here. And without us, youwouldn't be here. It's a perfect arrangement." But that's not the point, is it?" he asked rhetorically. "So there wewere, debating on whether to kill you, and I asked a simple question -where's the fun in that? Bam! Dead. What do we do then? No, there'sso much more we can. He plunged the dagger into a gaping gash in the dragon’s side. He stumbled as he cut, moving as the dragon turned and twisted. He cut the wound open deeper, parting flesh. Blood hissed as it steamed on the dragon’s scales.I blurred into my humanoid form. “What are you doing?”“Your earth elementals can’t stab through her scales,” he said. “But they can pierce through her softer flesh.”My eyes widened. I gripped my earth totem in my right hand, the solid kapok wood hot to my grip. It was on the. Mom and I pickedup Cindy, then drove to the salon. Matty and her mother were alreadythere. Cindy was first, then Matty, Mom, me and lastly, Matty's mother.We all had our hair styled, nails done, eyebrows plucked, makeup done,and in my case, my upper lip was waxed. Ouch! But I no longer had anyhair there, and it was my worst spot to shave. The pain was worth it.Jeri had done my hair, using the perm I still had, in a style thatlooked playful, but could be redone to look elegant quite easily..