>>3957056>>3957056Some time during the sheep siege, Molly's mask drops, and he notices that, hey, the short one isn't just a short delinquent, she's a kid ... and he still decides to go ham on the suckers. After being retraumatized, Molly's sentiments vis-a-vis (Junior-)Dr. Ashling take a turn from negative to really negative.
Later, during Sylvie's humiliating captivity, he develops a rapport with his captors: his regard of Giovanni becomes more nuanced and complex, by which I mean he finds new and exciting ways to despise him, especially after realizing that he isn't merely a miscreant, but also an idiot. With Molly, he's surprised.
She's cordial, and conversational. Also, quite clever: he quickly surmises (after being duped almost immediately after underestimating her) that she's tolerating being very nice to him despite clearly kinda hating his guts so she could squeeze some useful info out of him, which is very impressive for her age (I have Sylvie learn his lesson from this instead of being a total idiot all throughout because a story where only one character has a functioning brain coming from Blaber kinda gives me the ick).
Molly, on the other hand, after Sylvie had calmed down, figures that despite his hard shell, the older kid is otherwise fairly nice and understanding: doesn't talk down (to her), fairly reasonable, kinda pretty, and is otherwise sympathetic about her situation.
She still really wants to make him cry, though.
Besides the trauma, he's extremely full of himself, and keeps insisting that they refer to him as Doctor Ashling, despite him being only technically a doctor, and a junior rank at that (I don't know how Taiga Country works), and when he's not talking TO you, but more AT you, still comes off as still really kind of evil once the mask drops.
