Good news! The pause created by that little excursion to check up on the Professorian finally gave the team the opportunity to deal with their hopeless flabbergastitude in an affirmative way.
Just waiting for the effect to wear off had, quite obviously, not done the trick, so recourse to the sensory deprivation tanks had to be taken. Good thing they had those around. They didn’t come cheap, but it was an investment which Mopey has never rued – not only concerning the rest of the team, but for her own sake, as well. Since her new responsibilities as faculty head require a much higher degree of social exposure than she would normally feel comfortable with, her tank is invaluable to help her unwind and find back to herself, every now and then. Her sensory deprivation tank, I mean, not that other tank. That old T-72 she bought from old Soviet overstock serves pretty much the same purpose, as far as Mopey is concerned, but since it causes a lot more collateral damage in the process, she restricts its use to cases where she’s really thoroughly fed up with people. >_>
Anyway, the sensory deprivation tank did the trick, and Mopey is deeply relaxed and ready to face reality again now, and the others will soon follow. And none too soon, since, contrary to its claims, Latho was getting kind of nervous – and even started to fall back into bad old, self-destructive habits. And we can’t have that. It’s supposed to be a creature of light, love and sugaryness, so smoking doesn’t really fit its image – the only allowable indulgence would be chocolate cake, or parfait, or cookies, or pancakes with syrup, or ice cream, or…hey, actually that’s quite an exhaustive list of in-character choices. Really hard to see why it would prefer cigarettes, especially since a more rounded body shape would also be perfectly in-character. >_>
More on Thursday.
Maybe Latho thought they were candy cigarettes at first but found out far too late the terrible, terrible truth and now he/she/it’s addicted to nicotine.
Oh God, candy cigarettes! That was so long ago I had completely forgotten about their existence XD – too bad, too, since that would have made a great gag in context. (I haven’t seen any candy cigarettes around for so long, I just checked to see whether they were actually banned around here – seems they’re still perfectly legal, just no longer terribly popular.)